“Did you,” he asked, “know Moray Cassel in his lifetime?”
“I did.”
“When did you last see him alive?”
“On Tuesday, the tenth of this month.”
“At what time?”
“At about four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“When did you next see him?”
“On the evening of Sunday, the fifteenth.”
“Was he alive?”
“He was dead.”
“What did you do?”
“I notified the manager of the apartment house, who notified the police.”
“Cross-examine,” Floyd snapped.
“No questions,” Mason said.
A police officer was called as a witness, then a deputy coroner. A diagram was introduced showing the position of the body on the bed as of 9 P.M. on Sunday, the fifteenth, when the body was discovered and the position of the various articles of furniture in the apartment.
Floyd next called William Ardley, the police officer who testified to searching the apartment for significant clues.
“What did you find?”
“I found a BankAmerica credit card issued to one Diana Douglas of San Francisco.”
“What did you do with that card?”
“I marked it for identification by punching two small holes in it in certain places which I selected.”
“I show you what purports to be a credit card from the Bank of America and ask you if you have seen that before.”
“That is the identical credit card.”
“You’re positive?”
“The card is the same and the pin holes are in the exact location that I placed them.”
“Cross-examine,” Floyd said.
“No questions,” Mason announced cheerfully.
Floyd regarded him thoughtfully, then put a fingerprint technician on the stand who testified to finding quite a few latent fingerprints in the apartment. Some of them were the fingerprints of the decedent. Some of them were the fingerprints of the maid who cleaned the apartment twice a week.
“Any other fingerprints?” Floyd asked.
“There were some we couldn’t identify.”
“Any others that you could?”
“Yes, sir. Two of them.”
“Where were they?”
“One of them was in the bathroom on the mirror of the medicine chest. The other one was on a nightstand table by the side of the bed where the body was lying.”
“Did you determine the identity of these fingerprints?”
“We did, yes, sir. One of them is the middle finger of the defendant’s right hand. The other is the thumb of the defendant’s right hand.”
“You’re positive?”
“We have more than enough points of similarity and several unusual characteristics.”
“Anything else in the bathroom?”
“There was a towel with blood stains on it, a moist towel where someone had evidently washed—”
“Objected to as conclusion of the witness,” Mason said.
“Sustained,” Judge Elliott snapped.
“A bloody towel,” the witness said.
“You have that here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Produce it, please.”
The witness produced a sealed paper bag, opened it, and took out a hand towel with the words TALLMEYER APARTMENTS embroidered in the corner. The towel was stained a faint rusty color.
“We offer to introduce it in evidence as People’s Exhibit B,” Floyd said.
“No objection,” Mason observed casually.
“You photographed the latent fingerprints?” Floyd asked.
“I did.”
“Will you produce those photographs, please?”
The photographs of the latent prints were produced and introduced in evidence. The prosecutor then introduced a whole series of photographs, showing the decedent on the bed with blood which had saturated the pillow, dripped down to the floor, and spread over the carpet.
An autopsy surgeon was called as a witness. He testified that he had recovered the fatal bullet from the back of the skull; that the bullet was of a type known as a .22-caliber, long rifle bullet; that it had penetrated the forehead on the median line about two inches above the eyes; that there had been a very considerable hemorrhage.
“When did death occur?” the prosecutor asked.
“In my opinion, making all of the tests we could, death occurred sometime between two o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday, the twelfth and five o’clock in the morning on Saturday, the fourteenth.”
“Was death instantaneous?”
“No, I don’t think so. Unconsciousness immediately followed the shot, and there was probably no movement of the body. But, despite the fact the victim was unconscious, the heart continued to pump blood into the brain which accounted for the very extensive hemorrhage. Death may have resulted in a period of ten or fifteen minutes after the fatal shot, or it may have been an hour. I can’t tell.”
“You say you recovered the fatal bullet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I delivered it to the ballistics expert in the presence of two witnesses.”
“Could you determine the weapon from which that bullet had been fired?”
“Not definitely at the moment. We knew that it must have been fired from one of several makes of guns and we rather suspected that it had been fired from a gun with a long barrel because of—”
“Move to strike out what the witness rather suspected,” Mason said.
“It will go out,” Judge Elliott ruled. “Stick to facts, Mr. Witness.”
“Very well,” Floyd said with a triumphant smile. “We’ll withdraw this witness for the moment and put on other witnesses, then recall him. I will call Miss Smith, please.”
Miss Smith turned out to be a neatly dressed young woman in her early thirties.
“What is your occupation?”
“I am employed at the ticket counter of United Airlines at the Los Angeles Terminal.”
“Were you so employed on Thursday, the twelfth of this month?”
“I was.”
“I will ask you to look at the defendant and tell us if you have ever seen her before.”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Where?”
“At the ticket counter on the evening of Thursday, the twelfth.”
“At about what time?”
“It was exactly six-forty P.M.”
“Did you have a conversation with her?”
“Yes.”
“And what was that conversation?”
“She was very anxious to know if the plane which was due to leave at six twenty-seven had left on time or whether it would be possible for her to get aboard. I told her that the plane had left only about five minutes late, that she would have to wait approximately an hour and twenty minutes and take a flight leaving at eight o’clock.”
“What did she do?”
“She asked for a ticket to San Francisco.”
“And then?” Floyd asked, his manner triumphant.
“Then she produced her purse and said, ‘I’ll pay for it with a BankAmerica credit card.’ Then she raised her purse so I could briefly see it and suddenly dropped it down out of sight.”
“You say, suddenly?”
“Suddenly and self-consciously.”
“Was there any reason for such action?”
“She had a gun in her purse.”
“What sort of a gun?”
“A long-barreled gun with a wooden handle.”
“When you say a gun, you mean a revolver?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then she fumbled around in her purse, keeping it below the counter so I couldn’t see inside of it, and said, ‘Oh, I seem to have misplaced my BankAmericard.’ Then she thought for a moment and said, ‘Did Mr. Perry Mason, the lawyer, leave a ticket here for me?’
“I told her that Mr. Mason had left two tickets which had been charged to his air-travel card. One ticket he had picked up, and the other one he had left to be picked up by Diana Douglas.