Drake nodded.
“And since Hattie saw him alive after midnight, it means someone tampered with the evidence.”
“Yes, that’s logical,” Drake admitted.
“Now then,” Mason went on, “one of the persons who fits the description of our hypothetical murderer is George Brogan, but there is one defect to our line of reasoning connecting him with the crime.”
“What’s that?”
“He had no motive.”
“What do you mean, he had no motive? Wasn’t Fritch sore at him and—?”
“Why should Fritch be sore at him? Brogan was getting money out of Bain for Fritch.”
“But couldn’t he have stolen that recording and—?”
“No,” Mason said, “as soon as Fritch died the menace against the Bain estate was wiped out. The tape recording doesn’t prove anything. It would only have been a means of corroborating Fritch’s testimony. If Fritch had stated that Bain was his confederate and that Bain knew the money which went into that oil land had come from the bank, that would have been one thing. He could have used the tape recording to bolster his testimony, but without that testimony you certainly couldn’t use the tape recording.”
“By George,” Drake said, “that’s so!”
The telephone rang sharply.
Della Street jerked the receiver to her ear, said, “Yes. Hello, Mr. Mason’s office.… Oh, just a minute.
“It’s for you, Paul.”
Drake picked up the receiver, said, “Hello. Yes.… The devil.… You’re sure.… A good print.… The same type of blood.… Okay, thanks. Keep me posted.”
He hung up the telephone, grinned at Mason and said, “You’ve hit a jackpot, Perry.”
“How come?”
“They’ve made a test of the stains of blood on the bottom of the icebox. They’re human blood. They’re blood of the same type as that of J. J. Fritch. It’s an unusual and rare type. Therefore, the similarity in typing is significant.
“They’ve found perfect latent fingerprints outlined in blood on the packages of food that were taken out of the deep-freeze container. There again the blood is the same type as that of J. J. Fritch. They’ve photographed the blood-stained prints but they can’t match them with those of anyone in the case. They’re not Sylvia Atwood’s. They’re not Hattie Bain’s. They’re not Ned Bain’s. They’re not yours. They’re not George Brogan’s.”
Mason grinned and lit a cigarette.
“Any suggestions?” Drake asked.
“Lots of them.”
“Such as what?”
Mason said, “Let’s narrow down our line of reasoning, Paul. We need someone who had an alibi for the hours before the murder was committed but who could have no alibi afterward. We need someone who was strong enough to lift the body of J. J. Fritch. Moreover, we need someone who was scientific enough to realize that the question of body temperature would be considered by the autopsy surgeon as an element in determining the time of death.
“Furthermore, there’s the question of motivation to be considered. We need someone who stood to profit by finding that spool of master tape. We need someone who was ruthless enough to have stabbed J. J. Fritch in the back, and we need above all someone who had access to the ice pick in the Bain house.
“Now, the selection of that weapon is an interesting thing. It means that the person who committed that murder wanted a weapon that would do the job, yet it wasn’t the most efficient weapon on earth. It was a weapon that came to hand on the spur of the moment, say some time after midnight on the date of the murder.
“We need someone who could establish an alibi for an entire evening up to around 3:00 A.M., who had opportunity after that to go and kill Fritch, leave his body in the icebox until around eight in the morning and then plant it in some other place. Of course, finding the door of Brogan’s apartment unlocked gave him the ideal place.
“So our murderer, Paul, is strong, ruthless, cold-blooded, scientific, interested in the fortunes of the Bain family and one who would have access to the ice pick.”
“Good heavens,” Della Street said, “do you realize that you’re practically putting a rope around the neck of Jarrett Bain?”
Mason stood looking down at her and at the startled face of Paul Drake. He inhaled a deep drag from his cigarette, blew out the smoke, grinned and said, “Well?”
“Good Lord,” Drake exclaimed, “when you look at it that way, it’s the only possible solution. He came home and talked with his dad, he learned all about what you had said about the probability of the tape recording being forged, of it being spliced tape. Edison Doyle could give him an alibi for the time around two o’clock. Then he said he went to bed and slept until about ten o’clock. Good Lord!”
Mason said, “There was nothing whatever to have prevented him from going up to see J. J. Fritch around three-thirty in the morning, sticking an ice pick in Fritch’s back, pulling the stuff out of the deep-freeze locker, putting Fritch in there, staying out until about eight o’clock in the morning, then going back and getting Fritch, putting him in the liquor closet where he knew the body would be discovered when Sylvia and I went to keep our nine o’clock appointment. Then he hastily dumped the food back into the icebox and-”
“Wait a minute,” Paul Drake interposed, “you’re narrowing the circle all right, but what about Edison Doyle? He was one who had to leave, and he was one who had an alibi for around midnight but didn’t—”
“And look at the way he’s built,” Mason said. “Can you see him reaching down and picking J. J. Fritch up out of an icebox, carrying him across the hall and propping him in a liquor closet? Doyle is the fox-terrier type, but Jarrett Bain is a great, big, lumbering giant of a man with a bull neck, a huge pair of shoulders, and that peculiarly cold-blooded attitude of utter detachment which characterizes a certain type of scientist.”
“So what are we going to do?” Paul Drake asked.
Mason turned to Della Street. “Ring up the Bain residence,” he said. “See if you can get Jarrett Bain on the telephone.”
Della Street put through the call, then after a moment looked at Mason with wide, startled eyes.
“What is it?” Mason asked.
“Jarrett isn’t even going to be here for the funeral,” she said. “He left word that he was sorry but he couldn’t help the dead. He could only help the living. He said he’d received a wire on some new archaeological remains, and he took off by plane.”
Mason pinched out his cigarette.
“Well,” he said, “I guess he’s gone, then. Do you know it might be a difficult matter to find him.”
Drake seemed uncomfortable. “The police,” he said, “are trying to pin this on Brogan. They’re claiming the fingerprints are those of Brogan’s accomplice, that Brogan engineered the whole thing.”
Mason grinned.
“Aren’t you going to tip them off,” Della Street asked, “so that they can lay off of Brogan and catch Jarrett Bain before he disappears into the jungle?”
Mason grinned. “There is such a thing as poetic justice. Let’s let Mr. Brogan sweat a little. They can’t actually convict him on the evidence they have now. They have evidence enough to arrest but not enough to convict. As far as Jarrett Bain is concerned let’s let the police solve their own problems.
“Our responsibilities are very definite and very limited, Della. We were representing Hattie Bain, who has now been discharged from custody.”
“Hattie Bain and her green-eyed sister,” Della said.
“Oh, by all means,” Mason grinned, “the green-eyed sister. Little Miss Fix-It. We mustn’t forget her!”
“Oh, my Lord!” Della Street exclaimed. “That telegram summoning Jarrett to the jungle on account of that new archaeological discovery! Remember she said—”
She broke off and looked wide-eyed at Perry Mason.
The lawyer lit another cigarette. “Little Miss Fix-It,” he said.
About the Author
Erle S
tanley Gardner (1889–1970) was the top selling American author of the twentieth century, primarily due to the enormous success of his Perry Mason Mysteries, which numbered more than eighty and inspired a half-dozen motion pictures and radio programs, as well as a long-running television series starring Raymond Burr. Having begun his career as a pulp writer, Gardner brought a hard-boiled style and sensibility to his early Mason books, but he gradually developed into a more classic detective novelist, providing clues to allow astute readers to solve his many mysteries. For over a quarter of a century, he wrote more than a million words a year under his own name as well as numerous pseudonyms, the most famous being A. A. Fair.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1953 by Erle Stanley
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-6127-8
This edition published in 2020 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THE PERRY MASON MYSTERIES
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The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister Page 22
