“At that time she was being intimate with young Haslett, and when he began to cool off she decided to pretend to be pregnant and—”
“Now, just a minute, just a minute!” Judge Elwell interrupted. “I think we’d better go ahead by question and answer and give opposing counsel a chance to object.”
“Let her go, as far as we’re concerned,” Perry Mason said. “I think I can clarify the situation with a few questions on cross-examination, but, as far as her story is concerned, she has told it before and I have heard it. If it will expedite matters to have her tell it now, the defense is perfectly willing.”
“Very well,” Judge Elwell ruled; “there’s a lot of hearsay here.”
“It isn’t hearsay at all,” Maxine Edfield snapped. “I know what I know right from her own lips. She wanted to force Harmon Haslett into marriage, and she talked it over with me in advance.”
“Talked what over with you?” Dillon asked.
“Talked over the fact that she was going to pretend to be pregnant, use the old racket to try and force Harmon to run away with her and get married.”
“She told you this herself?”
“She told me that herself.”
“But it didn’t work, she didn’t get married?” Dillon asked.
“It did not. Harmon Haslett might have fallen for it, but the company had a troubleshooter, a man named Garland — who’s sitting right there in the courtroom — and Mr. Garland put a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in an envelope and sent it—”
“Now wait a minute,” Dillon interrupted. “You don’t know what Garland did of your own knowledge.”
“Well, I know that she got the thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills and right at that tune young Harmon Haslett took a quick trip to Europe; and there Ellen Calvert was, left with a broken romance, a series of disappointments in her personal career, and a thousand dollars in cash. So she moved west and started over again.”
“Did you hear from her after she left?” Dillon asked.
“I never heard a word from her.”
“How did you happen to get in touch with her again?”
“Through Mr. Lovett, the lawyer.”
“That is Mr. Lovett, sitting here in court?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what happened?”
“He started trying to trace Ellen Calvert and started looking back into her record to find the people she had known. He found that she had been very friendly with me at one time and came to me and asked me about her.”
“And he told you where she was?”
“Yes; he had found her by using detectives, I believe.”
“In any event, he brought you here to Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
“You may inquire,” Dillon said.
“When did you first see the defendant after you arrived in Los Angeles?” Mason asked.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “I know what you’re trying to get at. I made a wrong identification. After all, I hadn’t seen Ellen for twenty years and you had a ringer, a woman who was almost the spitting image of Ellen. You planted her on me so I made a wrong identification. But that was all that was wrong about my testimony. I just made a mistake about that woman. I thought she was Ellen Calvert, or Ellen Adair, as she calls herself now. But the minute I saw the real Ellen I was absolutely certain. I simply couldn’t have been mistaken with her — but the way I was brainwashed on that identification, I did make a mistake with the first person I saw. But that was a deliberate plant and, anyway, all that was wrong was the identification. That didn’t affect in any way the things that had happened twenty years ago or the things that Ellen had told me.”
Judge Elwell said, “Even making allowances for the fact that this is a preliminary examination and that there is no objection on the part of counsel for either side, it seems to me that this witness is unduly garrulous and that it might be better to restrict the examination to question and answer.”
“That’s what I am doing. I’m answering questions,” Maxine Edfield said. “But I know what he’s going to try to do. He’s going to try to discredit me because he ran this ringer in on me and I identified her. And then he trapped me into making the identification absolutely positive when, actually, I only felt the woman I had identified as Ellen was Ellen. I wasn’t completely sure of it.”
“But you said you were sure?” Mason asked.
“All right, I said I was sure, and I said I was just as certain of my identification as of any other part of my testimony. You trapped me. That’s an old lawyer’s trick. I know now because Mr. Lovett told me. But I didn’t know it at the time. I hadn’t had any experience with lawyers.”
Judge Elwell said, “I’m going to ask the witness to just answer questions and stop — just answer what is required in order to give the information requested.”
“Your expenses were paid by Mr. Lovett?” Mason asked.
“Yes, they were. Mr. Lovett came to me all open and aboveboard, and he wanted me to come out here with him, and I told him I was a working girl, and he said he would take care of my expenses.”
“And he gave you money to cover expenses?”
“He gave me some money, yes.”
“And you used that to pay expenses?”
“Well, some of them, and some of them he paid.”
“You came with Mr. Lovett on the plane?”
“Yes.”
“Who purchased the ticket for your transportation?”
“Mr. Lovett.”
“When you came here you went to a hotel.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Lovett is staying at that same hotel.”
“Yes, he is.”
“And who is paying the hotel bill at that hotel?”
“Why, Mr. Lovett, I suppose.”
“And what about meals?”
“I either sign for meals in the hotel restaurant or I have my meals with Mr. Lovett or sometimes they are sent up to my room.”
“Then how much actual expenses have you paid from the money Mr. Lovett gave you?”
“Well... just incidental expenses.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you kept an account?”
“Not a detailed account.”
“And what are the incidental expenses?”
“Oh, little things that you can’t charge — newspapers, beauty parlors, and little things like that.”
“You haven’t paid out fifty dollars in incidental expenses, have you?”
“Well, perhaps not.”
“You haven’t paid out twenty-five dollars.”
“Perhaps not.”
“You haven’t paid out ten dollars.”
“Well, perhaps not, but it probably is around that vicinity somewhere.”
“And how much money did Mr. Lovett give you for expenses?”
“I don’t know that has anything to do with it. That’s a private matter between Mr. Lovett and me.”
“How much money did Mr. Lovett give you for expenses?”
Maxine Edfield turned to Judge Elwell. “Do I have to answer that question?”
“I think it’s a proper question. I have heard no objection to it. I think the prosecution considers it as proper cross-examination.”
“All right,” she blazed. “If you have to know, he gave me five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred dollars for incidental expenses,” Mason said.
“Yes, that’s right,” she flared. “I had to leave my job and come out here.”
“You got a leave of absence from your job, didn’t you?”
“Well, I had a vacation coming.”
“How much of a vacation?”
“Two weeks.”
“And did Mr. Lovett arrange with your employer to extend your two-week vacation if necessary?”