The Case of the Lazy Lover

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Mrs. Allred opened the car door on the left-hand side. She got in and proceeded to club her husband to death with the jack handle. Then she backed the car around, drove it back to the highway, down to a place where there was a sheer drop, took her suitcase out, threw the jack handle away, got back in the car and headed it toward the cliff, jumped out, leaving her husband inside, stopped a passing motorist and hitchhiked to town. Now then, if she wants to co-operate, she can cop a plea of manslaughter.”

  Mason said, “She didn’t do anything of the sort.”

  Tragg smiled knowingly. “The tracks say she did, and tracks don’t lie.”

  Mason said, “Fleetwood, if your story’s true, how did it happen that you didn’t …”

  Tragg suddenly got to his feet. “I think that will do, Mason.”

  “How’s that?” the lawyer asked.

  Tragg was smiling. “You’ve done me quite a favor, Mason,” he said. “You’ve got this witness to quit stalling around. He’s told a story now that checks absolutely with the facts. And right now I don’t want you to do anything to spoil it. You’ll have an opportunity to cross-examine this witness when he gets on the witness stand. We can dispense with any further questions from you. You’re going home and get some sleep.”

  Mason said, “There are just a couple of questions I want to ask, Tragg. A couple of points I want to clear up.”

  Tragg smiled and shook his head.

  Mason said, “Hang it, I developed this whole thing for you. I …”

  Tragg turned to Fleetwood and said, “No matter what Mason says, Fleetwood, don’t say another word as long as he’s in the room. Do you understand?”

  Fleetwood nodded.

  Mason, recognizing defeat, pinched out the end of his cigarette, said to Tragg, “Well, it was nice while it lasted.”

  Tragg grinned. “This is once,” he said, “that not only does Perry Mason’s client have her neck in the noose, but the great Perry Mason put it there.”

  “That’s all right,” Mason said grimly. “What I wanted was the truth. I knew that Fleetwood was lying about that amnesia.”

  “Who didn’t?” Tragg said. “I was waiting for him to crack at the proper moment. But when you showed up here, I thought that perhaps you could soften him up for me. I didn’t realize that you were going to play into my hands this far.”

  “I didn’t either,” Mason said grimly, and stalked out of the room.

  Chapter 16

  The clock on the wall of the visitors’ room of the county jail said that it was ten minutes past nine in the morning. Mason sat on one side of the heavy steel mesh which separated the two ends of the room. Mrs. Allred sat on the other side. At the far corner a matron waited for the lawyer to finish his visit with his client.

  “What did you tell Lieutenant Tragg?” Mason asked her. “Not a thing. He never came near me.”

  “That’s bad,” Mason conceded.

  “Why is it bad?”

  Mason sketched out Fleetwood’s story, while Mrs. Allred listened intently. When he finished, there was a few moments’ silence.

  Then Mrs. Allred said quickly, “It’s all a complete lie, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason shook his head. “Something corroborates Fleetwood’s story. I don’t know yet what it is. If Tragg hasn’t been hot after you for a statement, it means Fleetwood’s story gets a good corroboration, all the way along the line. There are tracks, for one thing. There is only one explanation. You haven’t been telling me the truth.

  “Fleetwood stalled around long enough with one thing and another, but when he finally came through with the story, he came through with a humdinger. It’s a story that puts you in the position of committing a nice little murder. And the nice part of it is that provocation is there. And motivation is there. The thing is so marvelously tailored that the jury will sympathize with you, but will decide that you’re technically guilty, probably of manslaughter.”

  She said, “Fleetwood must have killed him, Mr. Mason.”

  The lawyer shook his head. “I’m not so certain,” he said.

  “But he must have! It had to be either Bob Fleetwood or me.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And I know that I didn’t kill him!”

  Mason said, “I wish that I could find some way of making a jury share your conviction.”

  “Do you feel that—that I’m in a spot?”

  “Fleetwood’s story,” Mason said, “is one that sounds convincing.”

  “Even to you?”

  Mason said, “I make it a point in my business to believe my clients always.”

  “If I weren’t your client, Bob Fleetwood’s story would convince you?”

  “It might,” Mason admitted. “I wanted to see what you had to say about having been in the luggage compartment of that car.”

  “I never was.”

  “Do you know of anyone who was?”

  “No.”

  “There’s blood on the carpet. The officers found that.”

  “So I understand.”

  “And you can’t explain that? You didn’t have a bloody nose?”

  “No.”

  Mason said thoughtfully, “You know, if it had only occurred to you to tell the story that Fleetwood told, but dress it up with a few variations, it might have accounted for everything, including the blood on the carpet of the luggage compartment.”

  “But I told you the truth, Mr. Mason.”

  “There are times,” Mason said, “when an artistic lie can crowd the truth right off the stage. The interesting thing is that Fleetwood’s story is so beautifully logical and puts you in such a sympathetic light in front of the public. But it also hangs the technical killing of your husband right around your neck. I wish you could find some way of accounting for how blood got on the carpet of the luggage compartment.”

  “Well, I can’t.”

  “That’s the nice part of Fleetwood’s story,” Mason said. “It accounts for everything. It gives the police a beautiful, beautiful case.”

  “Against me?”

  Mason nodded.

  “I didn’t kill my husband, Mr. Mason.”

  “Well,” Mason said, “you’ve got to talk. It’s got to a point now where it’s your story against Bob Fleetwood’s. Your story can’t explain certain things. Fleetwood’s does. There’s some evidence I don’t know about. Tragg’s out investigating it now. If that evidence corroborates Fleetwood’s story the way it would seem to, the killing is wrapped around your neck. I can get you off with manslaughter, or I might get a self-defense acquittal, but the responsibility for the fatal blow is yours.”

  “What evidence is there that could possibly give such corroboration?”

  “Tracks for one thing.”

  “Well, my story is the truth.”

  “I hope it is,” Mason said and signaled to the matron that the interview was over.

  Chapter 17

  It was shortly before noon. Drake tapped his code knock on the panels of Mason’s exit door.

  Della Street opened the door.

  Drake came in, followed by a thin man in the late fifties.

  “You remember Bert Humphreys,” Drake said. “He worked on that Melrose murder case for you, Perry.”

  Mason nodded, said, “Hello, Humphreys.”

  Humphreys nodded, the swift, competent nod of a man who has important information to impart and wants to get on with it.

  “Sit down,” Drake said to Humphreys, “and tell ’em your story.” Drake turned to Mason and said parenthetically, “As soon as I got your call this morning saying to get a man up to Overbrook’s place to look for the tracks of a car in soft soil, I telephoned Humphreys. Humphreys was working on the case at Springfield. He jumped in his car and beat it up there. He had at least an hour’s start on the officers. He managed to get a complete diagram of everything that was up there before the officers arrived. They were sore as hell at finding him there, but there was nothing they could do about it.”

>   “Go ahead,” Mason said to Humphreys. “What was it? What did you find?”

  Humphreys took a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, said, “I made a map. But, before I show you the map, Mr. Mason, I’d better tell you generally what happened. I got up to Overbrook’s place and told him I’d come to investigate the car tracks. He thought I was from the sheriff’s office and he spilled the whole thing to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, it seemed that the more Overbrook thought things over about Fleetwood, the more uneasy he became. He felt certain from the way his dog had been barking that there had been noises before Fleetwood came walking up the road. And Overbrook came to the conclusion they might have been noises made by a car and by people talking when Fleetwood got out. So Overbrook, who’s something of a hunter and tracker, started back-tracking Fleetwood.”

  “He could find Fleetwood’s tracks?”

  “Yes. Not right near the house, but reasonably close to it. You see, it had been raining hard Saturday and the ground was soft, and it’s kept on drizzling more or less ever since, so the ground has stayed pretty soft. That gave Overbrook excellent tracking conditions.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He back-tracked Fleetwood without any great amount of trouble, and came to a place where an automobile had been parked. Overbrook started to look the tracks over, and then he saw some things that made him do a lot of thinking. So he didn’t even stop. He kept right on going.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Hell, yes. You can see his tracks plain as day. He walked right up to the spot where this car had been parked, turned in toward the place where the front of the car had been, then swung out in a turn and kept right on walking until he came to a farm road that was on hard soil. Then he walked back to his house, picked up a tractor and trailer, loaded the trailer with scrap lumber that he’d had hanging around ever since he tore down the chicken house, drove the tractor and trailer back to the place on the farm road where he’d come in, took the boards one at a time, and made a little boardwalk running alongside his tracks and right out to the place where the tracks of the automobile were located. He was particularly careful in laying the boards. He’d lay one or two boards, then walk back along the boardwalk to get more boards, come out and lay them, and walk back along the boardwalk again. In that way, he preserved every track there was in the ground. You can see the whole story there just as plain as day. He’s a good, careful man and I guess he made a lot better job of preserving those tracks than the officers would have done if he’d left it to them. The way things are now, even with the officers milling around there, you can still see the tracks—or you could when I left. They were getting ready to use some plaster of Paris then.”

  “Then what?”

  “After Overbrook fixed the boards, he drove to the post office and telephoned the sheriff. He told the sheriff what he’d found and what he’d done, and the sheriff telephoned Tragg. They told Overbrook to go back and guard the place until detectives showed up.

  “Well, I came out there and started looking around. Overbrook thought I was from the sheriff’s office. He yelled at me to go around by the house and drive out on the farm road. I did that, and he showed me the boardwalk he’d built leading out to where the car had been parked, and told me what he’d found. I sketched the whole business, and had just finished my sketch when the sheriff and Lieutenant Tragg showed up. They were a little peeved about the whole thing, but thanks to the way Overbrook had laid the boards down, I hadn’t messed things up any at all, and they couldn’t make any real beef. Of course, they kicked me off the place and probably would have taken my sketch away from me if they’d known I had it. But Overbrook didn’t say anything about it until after I’d got started. By that time, I guess the officers had troubles of their own. They were making sketches of their own and taking photographs.”

  “Let’s take a look at the sketch,” Mason said.

  Humphreys spread the sketch on Mason’s desk.

  “Now here,” he said, “you have everything. Here’s the place where the machine turned off the road.”

  “Any question about it being the right machine?” Mason asked.

  “Apparently not. Where the car was standing the ground was pretty soft, but where the car turned off the road, you could see the tracks of all four tires just as plain as day. Mrs. Allred’s car had new tires on the wheels, and there were three different makes of tires. Because the car was making a turn, there’s a place where the tracks of each one of the tires is distinctly outlined, just as though they’d been inked and then driven over a piece of paper. You can see every detail of the tread just as plain as day.

  “I’d previously sketched the treads of each one of the tires of Mrs. Allred’s car after the police located it down there at the bottom of the cliff. It’s Mrs. Allred’s car all right, or else it’s a car that was equipped with absolutely identical tires.”

  Mason nodded. “I just wanted to clear that point up.”

  “Well, here you are,” Humphreys said, indicating the diagram. “The road runs right along the edge of the tillable ground. On this side is a fence and alfalfa. On this side it’s all open land and unfenced. Where the car turned off, the ground is soft. You can see tracks just as plain as you could in fresh snow. Now look at this sketch. Here’s where the car turned off the road. It went up here and stopped. You can see where Fleetwood got out of the car. Here are his tracks where he got out of the door on the left side. You see, he walked right around toward the front of the car and across the headlights. His tracks show that he turned slightly when he got to this point almost directly in front of the headlights. He stood there for a second. First his footprints are in this direction. That’s where he stood when he called out to Mrs. Allred when she jumped out of the luggage compartment of the automobile.”

  “You can see her tracks?”

  “Here they are on this diagram. She jumped out of the luggage compartment. That’s right where the luggage compartment would be located. Right there. She hit the ground and started running. You can see she was going just as fast as she could leg it, straight for this road. There’s a graveled surface on the road so we can’t pick up her tracks any more after she got to the road. But she couldn’t have gone very far. She must have stood there waiting. It was right about that time, the way I get Fleetwood’s story from listening to what the officers said before they kicked me off the job, that Fleetwood called to her that her husband was out like a light and everything was all right.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Now then, you can see her tracks just as plain as day. She went down to the road, walked down the road some distance—no one knows just how far, probably never went out of earshot or out of sight of the car. She was thinking things over. She turned around and came back. Here are her tracks where she came back, and you can see them heading just as straight as a string for the place where the car had been left. She was headed right toward the left-hand door on the car—the driver’s seat.”

  “Then what happened?” Mason asked.

  “Then she got in the car and drove it away.”

  “How do you know she did?”

  “Figure it out for yourself,” Humphreys said. “I’ve studied the tracks carefully. This diagram shows you just what happened. She got out of the car, ran down to the road. She came back and got in the car. Fleetwood got out of the car and walked along to Overbrook’s house. Those are the only tracks. The car was in soft ground. No one could have got in that car or left the car without leaving tracks. If Fleetwood had returned to the car, he’d have left tracks.”

  “And Overbrook’s tracks?” Mason asked.

  “They were made this morning. You can follow them clearly, a steady, unbroken line of tracks. He walked down from his house, just as I’ve shown his tracks here. He started to cut across the tracks made by the automobile, then thought better of it when he appreciated their importance, made a swing, and walked back to the farm
road. Then he went and got his tractor and put the boards down.”

  “You don’t think a person could have got to the car or left the car by carefully picking the ground, and …”

  “Not a chance,” Humphreys said. “The ground is so soft that you can even see the tracks made by Overbrook’s dog when he was putting the boards down. I’ve just made a lot of little dots to show where those dog tracks are. I didn’t sketch each individual track. But the point I’m making is that the ground is so soft that even the dog left very plain, deeply indented tracks.”

  “And there’s no question but what these are Fleetwood’s tracks?”

  “None whatever. You can see them getting out of the automobile, walking around the car. There’s where he stood when he looked back at Mrs. Allred. There’s where he stood when he swung around and threw the gun away. There’s where he resumed walking and you can follow the tracks right up to within eight or ten feet of the roadway to Overbrook’s house.”

  Mason studied the diagram thoughtfully. “You’re sure you’ve got everything on here?”

  “Absolutely everything.”

  Mason said, “If this evidence is true, it’s important as hell.”

  “It’s true. The thing is right there on the ground. No person could have entered that automobile or left it without leaving tracks.”

  “Isn’t there some way a person could have approached that automobile without leaving tracks?” Mason asked.

  Humphreys shook his head doggedly.

  “Not by finding some way over hard ground?”

  “There wasn’t any.”