“I believe that’s right, yes.”
“Then what became of the soiled sheets?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know,” Sergeant Holcomb said irritably. “You can’t always connect up all these little things.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “Now, let’s get back to the alarm clock, Sergeant. The alarm was entirely run down?”
“That’s right.”
“The clock had a shut-off on it, by which the alarm could be shut off while it was sounding?”
“Yes, of course, all good clocks have that.”
“Yes; and this was a good clock?”
“Yes.”
“Yet the alarm had not been shut off?”
“I didn’t notice... well, no, I guess not. It was completely run down.”
“Yes,” Mason said. “Now, is it your experience, Sergeant, as an expert interpreter of circumstantial evidence, that a sleeper permits an alarm to run entirely down before shutting it off?”
“Some people sleep more soundly than others,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
“Exactly,” Mason agreed, “but when a man is aroused by an alarm clock, his first natural reflex is to turn off the alarm — that is, if the alarm is within reaching distance, isn’t that right?”
“Well, you can’t always figure that way,” Sergeant Holcomb said, his face slowly darkening in color. “Some people go back to sleep after they shut off an alarm, so they deliberately put the alarm clock where they can’t get at it.”
“I understand that,” Mason said, “but in this case the alarm was placed within easy reach of the sleeper, apparently for the purpose of enabling the sleeper to shut off the alarm clock just as soon as it had wakened him, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“But that wasn’t done?”
“Well, some persons sleep sounder than others.”
“You mean that he wasn’t wakened until after the alarm had run down?”
“Yes.”
“But after an alarm runs down, it ceases to make any sound, does it not, Sergeant?”
“Oh, all that stuff isn’t getting you anywhere,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “The alarm was run down. He certainly got up. He didn’t lie there and sleep, did he? He got up and went out and caught a limit of fish. Maybe the alarm ran down and didn’t wake him up, and he woke up half an hour later, with a start, realizing that he’d overslept.”
“And then,” Mason said with a smile, “despite that realization, he paused to get himself breakfast, washed the breakfast dishes, made the bed, changed the sheets on the bed, laid the fire in the fireplace, and took the soiled bedclothes in his car down to the city to be laundered. Then he drove back to go fishing.”
Sergeant Holcomb said, “All that stuff is absurd.”
“Why is it absurd?” Mason asked.
Sergeant Holcomb sat in seething silence.
Mason said, “Well, Sergeant, since you seem to be unable to answer that question, let’s get back to the alarm clock. As I remember it, you made some experiments with similar alarm clocks, didn’t you, to find out how long it would take them to run down?”
“We made experiments with that same alarm clock,” the sergeant said. “We made experiments with other alarm clocks and we wired the manufacturer.”
“What did you find out?” Mason asked.
“According to the manufacturer, the alarm clocks would run down thirty to thirty-six hours after they’d been completely wound. According to an experiment we made with that clock, it ran down in thirty-two hours and twenty minutes after it was wound.”
“In that case,” Mason said, “the alarm clock must have been wound about twenty minutes after six o’clock, is that right?”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Mason said. “I’m simply asking you to interpret the evidence for the benefit of the jury, which is the thing you set out to do, Sergeant.”
“Well, all right, then the clock was wound at twenty minutes past six. What of it?”
“Would you say at twenty minutes past six in the morning, or at twenty minutes past six in the evening?” Mason asked.
“In the evening,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “The alarm went off at five-thirty. He wouldn’t have wound the alarm clock in the morning, and if he had, he’d have wound up the alarm again. It was wound up at six-twenty in the evening.”
“That’s fine,” Mason said, “that’s exactly the point I’m making, Sergeant. Now, you have examined the long distance telephone bills covering calls which were put in from that cabin?”
“I have.”
“And you found, did you not, that the last call listed was one which was placed at four o’clock in the afternoon, on Monday, the fifth of September, to Randolph Bolding, examiner of questioned documents?”
“That’s right.”
“And you talked with Mr. Bolding about that call?”
“Yes.”
“Did Mr. Bolding know Mr. Sabin personally?”
“Yes.”
“And did you ask him whether he recognized Mr. Sabin’s voice?”
“Yes, I did. He knew it was Sabin with whom he was talking. He’d done some work for Sabin before.”
“And Sabin asked him about some conclusions he had reached on some checks which had been given him?”
“Yes.”
“And Bolding told him that, of course, the checks were forgeries; that he hadn’t yet decided whether the endorsements on the back were in the same handwriting as the specimen which had been furnished him. And didn’t he say he was inclined to think they were not?”
“Yes, I gathered that.”
“And what else did Mr. Sabin say?”
“Mr. Sabin said he was going to send him another envelope, containing half a dozen more specimens of handwriting from five or six different people.”
“Was that envelope received by Mr. Bolding?”
“It was not.”
“Therefore, Mr. Sabin never had an opportunity to mail that letter?”
“So it would seem.”
“Now, let us return for the moment to the identity of the murderer. We now understand that Mr. Sabin suspected Steve Watkins of having forged checks in a very large amount. A handwriting expert was checking Watkins’ handwriting. Now, if Watkins had been guilty, what’s more natural than for him to have tried to silence Mr. Sabin’s lips by murder?”
Sergeant Holcomb’s lips curled in a sneer. “Simply because,” he said, “Watkins has a perfect alibi. Watkins left in an airplane, in the presence of a reputable witness, shortly after ten o’clock on the night of Monday the fifth, for New York. Every moment of his time is accounted for.”
“Exactly,” Mason said, “If we act on the assumption that Fremont C. Sabin was murdered on Tuesday, the sixth, but the trouble with your reasoning, Sergeant, is that there is nothing to indicate he was not murdered on the fifth.”
“On the fifth?” Sergeant Holcomb exclaimed. “Impossible. The fishing season didn’t open until the sixth, and Fremont Sabin would never have fished before the season opened.”
“No,” Mason said, “I daresay he wouldn’t. I believe it’s a misdemeanor, isn’t it, Sergeant?”
“Yes.”
“And murder is a felony?”
Sergeant Holcomb disdained to answer the question.
“Therefore,” Mason said, “a murderer would have no conscientious scruples whatever against catching a limit of fish on the day before the season opened. Now, Sergeant, can you kindly tell the coroner, and this jury, what there is about your reasoning any stronger than a string of fish?”
Sergeant Holcomb stared at Perry Mason with startled eyes.
“In other words,” Mason said, “having arrived at the conclusion Helen Monteith murdered Fremont C. Sabin at eleven o’clock in the morning, on Tuesday, the sixth of September, you have interpreted all the evidence on the premises to support your conclusions; but a fair and impartial appraisement indicates that Fremont C. Sabin was murdered sometime around four o’clock in the afternoon of Monday, September the fifth, and that the murderer, knowing that it would be some time before the body was discovered, took steps to throw the police off the track and manufacture a perfect alibi by the simple expedient of going down to the stream, catching a limit of fish, the afternoon before the season opened, and leaving those fish in the creel.