“Now, just a minute! Just a minute!” Judge DeWitt interrupted, banging his gavel down on the desk. “We’ll have no accusations of this nature at this time, Mr. District Attorney. You have objected to the question on the ground that it is argumentative. In the light of Mr. Mason’s statement, it is now the opinion of the Court that the question is not argumentative. Counsel is simply asking the witness what is a self-evident fact, that since the witness doesn’t know who checked into Room 728, it could have been anybody. It could have been the young woman who was subsequently found murdered. It could have been anyone.
“Now, the Court suggests that, if you want to show who this person was who checked into Room 728, if it becomes important for any reason, you can produce that person and have her testify, or in the event you can’t produce her, and any attempt is made to show that the person who checked into 728 was the person whose body was found in 729, you can produce the register and have a handwriting expert testify as to the differences in handwriting.”
Mason grinned and said, “And when he does that, Your Honor, the handwriting expert will have to testify that the Ruth Culver who signed the register and checked into 728 was the Rose Calvert whose body was found in 729.”
“Your Honor! Your Honor!” Hamilton Burger shouted. “This is improper. That is an improper statement. That is misconduct on the part of defense counsel.”
“Well,” Judge DeWitt said, “let’s not have so much excitement about this. After all, the matter is perfectly obvious. Have you checked the registration, Mr. District Attorney?”
Hamilton Burger’s face purpled. “No, Your Honor, we haven’t because there is no need for so doing. We don’t need to check the handwriting of every person who registered in the Redfern Hotel on the morning of the sixteenth in order to negative some perfectly fallacious theory which the defense is trying to advance.”
“Well, if you’re not going to anticipate the defense, and call witnesses to refute it in advance,” Judge DeWitt said, “I fail to see the reason for calling the witness Inskip.”
“We want to show “the tactics of defense counsel.”
“Well, go ahead and show them,” Judge DeWitt said, “but refrain from personalities, and if I were you, Mr. Prosecutor, I would put on my own case, and then in the event defense makes any claims, you have an opportunity to call witnesses in rebuttal. It always is a dangerous practice to try and anticipate a defense and negative it in advance, and it is not in accordance with the best practice.
“Proceed with the cross-examination of this witness, Mr. Mason.”
“No further cross-examination,” Mason said.
“Call your next witness,” Judge DeWitt said to Hamilton Burger.
“I will call Norton Barclay Calvert, the husband of the dead woman,” Hamilton Burger said. “Come forward, Mr. Calvert, and be sworn.”
There was a moment’s delay while the bailiff’s voice could be heard outside of the courtroom calling Norton Calvert.
A few moments later the door opened and Norton Calvert entered the courtroom and came forward to the witness stand.
He took the oath, settled himself on the witness stand, and Hamilton Burger said, “Your name is Norton Barclay Calvert, and you are the surviving husband of Rose M. Calvert?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have identified the body of Rose Calvert? You saw that in the morgue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When did you first know that your wife was dead?”
Mason said, “That is objected to, if the Court please, on the ground that it’s incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. It makes no difference to the issues in this case when he first knew his wife was dead.”
Judge DeWitt nodded his head.
“Just a moment, before the Court rules,” Hamilton Burger said. “May I be heard?”
“Certainly, Mr. Prosecutor.”
“We propose to show by this witness,” Burger said, “that he was appraised early in the morning of the seventeenth that his wife had been murdered, that this was long before the police knew the identity of the body. We propose to show that he was advised by Mr. Perry Mason, who was acting as attorney for the defendant, and that the only way Mr. Mason could possibly have known the identity of the murdered woman was by having his client give him that information. And the only way his client could have secured the information was by seeing and recognizing the murdered woman.”
Judge DeWitt looked at Mason. “That would seem to put something of a different aspect on the situation, Mr. Mason.”
“How is he going to prove that the only way I had of knowing the identity of the murdered woman was because of something my client told me?” Mason asked.
“We’ll prove it by inference,” Hamilton Burger said.
“I think there is no necessity for having any further discussion on this matter,” Judge DeWitt said. “I dislike to have offers of proof made in front of the jury. I think the testimony of the witness will speak for itself, but under the circumstances the Court is going to overrule the objection.”
“When did you first know that your wife had been murdered?” Hamilton Burger asked.
“About one o’clock on the morning of the seventeenth.”
“Where were you?”
“At my home in Elsinore.”
“How did you find out your wife was dead?”
“Mr. Mason told me she had been murdered.”
“By Mr. Mason, you mean Perry Mason, the attorney for the defendant here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, let’s not have any misunderstanding about this,” Hamilton Burger said. “You learned of your wife’s death through a statement made by Perry Mason to the effect that she had been murdered, and that statement was made around one o’clock in the morning of October seventeenth in Elsinore, California?”
“Yes, sir.”
“ Cross-examine!” Hamilton Burger snapped at Perry Mason.
“Do you remember what time I got to your house?” Mason asked.
“I think it was about twelve-forty-five or so.”
“Do you know when I left?”
“I know that you had left by a quarter past one,” he said. “You were there about half an hour, I think.”
“Didn’t I tell you that I thought your wife had been murdered after I had looked at pictures of your wife?”
“I showed you some pictures, but you seemed pretty positive. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gone down to see me at that hour in the morning.”
“Hamilton Burger grinned.
Judge DeWitt rebuked the witness. “Kindly refrain from arguing with counsel. Simply answer questions.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what you told me, but you woke me up out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night to tell me.”
“I woke you up?”
“Yes.”
“You had been sleeping?”
“I was sound asleep.”
“You went to bed when?”
“Nine-thirty or ten.”
“Had no trouble getting to sleep?”
“Certainly not.”
“And slept soundly until I came?”
“Yes.”
“Hadn’t got up even to take a smoke?”
“No.”
“You know as a heavy smoker that about the first thing a smoker does on awakening is to reach for a cigarette?”
“Certainly.”
“Yet after you let me in, you sat there for five minutes before you had a cigarette, didn’t you?”
“I... I don’t remember that so well. I had been — I can’t recall.”
Mason said, “Didn’t I tell you, Mr. Calvert, that I got your address from a letter which you had written your wife?”
“I don’t remember,” Calvert said. “I was pretty much broken up, and I don’t remember too much about what you said about how you got there, but I remember you came there and told me my wife had been murdered.”