#Vera Ralston | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rachelkaser · 2 years

Text

Masonry Monday: The Case of the Crimson Kiss

A key in the apartment of two roommates leads to the body of a man with a red lipstick print on his head. The police believe one of the women left it there -- but both were drugged at the time.

Who’s Who

Perry Mason’s client: Fay Allison, a woman about to be married who was drugged at the time of the murder, yet is still implicated

The victim: Carver Clement, a.k.a. Philip Walsh, a married womanizer who was going out with at least one of the women in the apartment

Suspects: Dane Grover, Fay’s fiance, who believes in her innocence but may be pressured by his rich family Anita Bonsal, Fay’s roommate and Dane’s former girlfriend, who was in a deteriorating relationship with the victim Louise Marlow, Fay’s aunt, who finds her and Anita out cold in bed after the murder occurred Shirley Tanner, Clement’s neighbor with insomnia, who witnessed most of the comings and goings the night of the murder Don Ralston, a friend of Clement’s who helped with his taxes Vera Payson, a party girl who becomes a witness to the murder

The Setup

A sleazy-looking man lets himself into the Mandrake Arms apartment building at night. That’s not a judgement on his appearance alone: The first thing he does is harass a woman in the lobby. She stalks off and he enters the elevator, riding it up to the 7th floor. On the 6th floor, a young woman says goodbye to her fiancé after dinner, sending him off to his bachelor party with a kiss.

The woman, Fay Allison, approaches her roommate, Anita Bonsal, and asks if she’s alright with the wedding. Anita used to date Fay’s fiancé, Dane Grover. Anita tells Fay she doesn’t care (she’s very clearly lying), and changes the subject to Fay’s Aunt Louise coming to the apartment ahead of the wedding. Anita heads out for a date and says she’ll be late. After leaving the apartment, she doesn’t leave the building but instead heads for the stairway.

Anita arrives at apartment 702 and lets herself in with a key. It’s the apartment of the man from the lobby, Carver Clement. She’s standoffish, and he thinks it’s because she’s upset over Fay and Dane. Anita says it’s because Carver is married, and tells him either he takes her out tonight or she’s leaving him. She’ll wait in the car downstairs. 45 minutes later, Anita is still waiting in the car, and she finally gives up and heads back inside.

Anita returns as Fay is packing and says she decided not to go out. She tells Fay to relax and make some hot chocolate so they can rest together before the big day. Fay agrees and goes to make the hot chocolate. After she leaves the bedroom, Anita goes to the medicine cabinet and takes out a pill container. She looks at the clothes in Anita’s suitcase.

At 1:30 in the morning, an older woman with a suitcase lets herself into the girls’ apartment, calling out for Fay and receiving no answer. She goes into the bedroom and sees both girls unconscious in their beds. The woman is revealed to be Fay’s aunt Louise, who tries to shake her niece awake. At first she’s cheerful, but gets progressively more disturbed as Fay is not waking up. Neither is Anita, who Louise also tries to rouse. Louise picks up the phone and calls Perry Mason.

Enter Perry Mason, Attorney at Law

Perry is having a meal at Clay’s Bar and Grill, when a waitress answers the phone and tells him that his answering service is calling. He takes the phone and greets Louise, whom he knows. Louise explains the situation, saying she can’t wake the two girls. Perry says he’s sending his doctor over and will follow shortly after with Della. The two arrive at the Mandrake Arms in a hurry and are buzzed up by Louise, meeting her at apartment 604.

Louise says Doctor Hawley is treating them -- they’ve had a barbiturate overdose. Louise explains that Fay is supposed to be married in three days. She arrived early, and the Doctor says that was lucky, as Fay would have died before morning if she hadn’t called for help. Anita’s overdose isn’t as bad. He goes back to his patients. Perry gently asks Louise if Fay was happy, and if Louise found a suicide note or anything she might be hiding. Louise shakes her head.

In the kitchen, Della finds the cups of hot chocolate. Perry says to leave them for evidence. He sends Louise into the bedroom and he and Della take a good look around. They empty the girls’ purses and find an extra key for room 702 in Fay’s purse. This being the only thing out of place, they head upstairs to visit the apartment. Perry knocks at the door loudly, but there’s no answer. He decides they should enter with the key. The neighbor across the hall pokes her head out, irritated, telling them to keep it down at 2:30 in the morning.

They enter and turn on the lights to an unpleasant surprise: The body of Carver Clement, slumped over on the ground. Perry turns him over to make sure he’s dead, and sees a red lipstick print on his forehead. They inspect the room: There’s a glass of scotch on the table, but no lipstick on it. The phone has been wiped clean of prints, but Perry uses it to call the police: He wants Tragg to know about this, in case they’re implicated.

As they’re about to leave the scene, two clubbers exit the elevator. The woman wants to go out, but the man says they’re going to visit Carver first, and they can have a drink with him. Perry and Della get into the elevator, while the two people knock on the door of 702. The neighbor once again pokes her head out to complain about the noise and mentions something about the “people who just went in there.” Perry and Della close the elevator door before the two clubbers can get back on.

The Murder

Down in the lobby, Della says the couple will remember them. Perry drops the key to 702 into a flower vase, and goes to the payphone while telling Della to check the name on 702′s mailbox. He calls up Louise and tells her to get a private ambulance to the service entrance, and for her and the doctor to take the girls to a sanitarium via the service elevator as quickly as possible. He then goes to let Della in, as she was locked out. The name on the mailbox is “Philip Walsh.”

Two police officers arrive and Mason lets them in, telling them about the body in 702. The couple arrive in the lobby and confront them, saying they know Perry and Della were in the room. They also explain that the victim’s name is Carver Clement, not Philip Walsh. The officers tell them all to go upstairs and wait for Tragg. Sometime later, Tragg asks Mason what he knows, and Mason says he never saw the dead man before. They were buzzed up, and Tragg tells them it couldn’t have been Clement, since he’s been dead since 9 or 10 -- poisoned by cyanide. There are women’s clothes in the closet.

Mason tells Tragg they were in the building to visit his friend, Louise Marlow, in apartment 604. He says he also knows Mason has a key, as the neighbor across the hall saw them letting themselves in. Curiously, Clement didn’t have a key on him either. The investigator says there are prints on one of the two glasses, while the other was wiped clean. Tragg also receives a phone call identifying who the laundry in the closets belongs to: Fay Allison. They go down to apartment 604.

Perry introduces Louise to Tragg, who asks where the girls are. At Perry’s urging, Louise tells him that they’re at the sanitarium and explains what happened to them. They won’t be interrogated until the next day. Perry sees Tragg out, then goes to phone Paul. He tells Louise that not only is Fay’s life on the line, but her reputation is as well.

The next day, at the sanitarium, Tragg is questioning Anita. She says that Fay had sleeping pills and took them sometimes. She also lies, saying she’d been out to see a movie, but came home. Tragg gets a call, and afterwards tells the deputy they won’t need to fingerprint Anita. He then tells Allison about Clement’s death, and that he was using the name “Philip Walsh” to disguise the fact he already had a wife and children. Anita says she never heard of him, but adds that Fay made the hot chocolate that night.

In her own room, Fay says that she didn’t fix the chocolate: If she’d wanted a sleeping pill, she’d have taken one. Mason curtly tells Tragg that the doctor wants them to keep it short. Tragg asks Fay if she knew Carver Clement, which Fay says she did not. Both men leave Fay’s room together. On the drive back, Tragg tells Mason that both girls’ prints are already on file from their jobs, and Fay’s prints are on one of the glasses in apartment 702.

The Investigation

Perry returns to his office to confer with Paul. Paul says that not only are Fay’s prints on the glass, but her clothes are in Clement’s closet, and her toothpaste is in the bathroom. He thinks Perry should resign as it looks like Fay was having an affair with Clement, but Perry thinks Fay is innocent: After all, why would she doctor Anita’s drink and her own while leaving behind so much evidence, or wipe her prints off of one glass but not the other?

Paul has evidence on the party couple: Vera Payson and Don Ralston. The latter knew Clement from doing his taxes. Perry raises another point: How did they get in? The street door was locked and Clement couldn’t have buzzed them up. They’d apparently argued in the lobby, so it’s possible another person could have buzzed them up, then fled the apartment before Perry and Della got there, as Clement’s own key is still missing. Perry tells Paul to check every lease and tenant in the building.

They also confer over the crimson lipstick print on Clement’s head. Perry says it’s not certain a woman did it. He theorizes that, if Fay and Clement were having an affair, Clement could have told Dane Grover out of spite. That would give Grover motive to commit murder. As if on cue, Della says Dane is there, and Perry shoos Paul out so he can meet the fiancé.

Dane enters and rather stiffly offers Perry money for Fay’s defense. Perry tells him the best thing he can do now is be loyal to Fay. Dane swears he will be, and when Perry infers that his rich, influential family might disapprove, gets angry. Perry confides to Dane that he doesn’t believe Fay even knew the victim. Dane says that Perry should know that Fay visited his family’s estate the weekend before the murder. She showed an interest in cyanide when the gardener was using it on gopher holes.

Shortly after, Perry gets an unexpected invitation to lunch from DA Hamilton Burger. They meet at Clay’s, along with Tragg. After they eat, Perry asks why they’re really there. Tragg says they know about the cyanide, but Perry says that doesn’t prove anything. He gets a call from Paul, and asks Paul in front of the other men to see if the apartments in the building are furnished -- meaning, do they all come with the same glassware. Burger offers to plead Fay down to manslaughter, but Perry refuses, as he thinks Fay is innocent and refuses to ruin her life. Later that night, Paul meets Perry in the office and says he couldn’t find any link between Clement and anyone in the building.

The Trial

As the trial gets underway, Burger calls Ralston to the stand. He asks if they recognize anyone at the defense table, and Ralston says he recognizes Mason and Della and testifies to their coming from 702. On cross, Mason asks whether Ralston and Payson were let in by buzzer. They were. He also asks Ralston how long they were talking in the lobby: A few minutes. He also asks about the elevator. It was called upstairs while they were in the lobby, but was empty when they called for it.

Burger objects to the elevator questions, and Mason says this is to show that someone was using the elevator to move within the building, and he wants to show the two witnesses were already in the building when he and Della went up to apartment 702 -- meaning person(s) unknown let them into the building. Burger says there’s no way to prove whoever called the elevator was moving to 702, and the judge sustains the objection.

Next, Burger calls Shirley Tanner, the insomniac neighbor, to the stand. She testifies seeing Mason let himself into 702 with a key. On cross, Mason asks why the lease for her apartment is in the name of Jerome Hill. She says she’s subleasing, as Hill is out of town for work. She’d only been in the apartment a week before the murder.

Burger next questions Tragg, who testifies about Mason being admitted by Louise. Tragg says Mason couldn’t have been in possession of the key to 702 before entering the building, as he wouldn’t have needed to be buzzed up. The next witness is a surprise: Della Street. While Perry idly doodles, Della has to admit that the two of them got the key to 702 from a purse in apartment 604.

The next witness is a forensic specialist, who confirms that the fingerprints and clothes in the apartment belong to Fay. On cross, Mason asks if there was lipstick on the printed glass, to which Burger objects. It’s overruled. Mason then asks about the lip imprint on Clement’s head. Harlan, the specialist, testifies that the imprint is as distinctive as a fingerprint, but he hasn’t tested it against the imprint of Fay. Over Burger’s continued objections, he takes an imprint of Fay’s lips and asks that Harlan compare them. Harlan says they’re not identical.

At Clay’s Grill, Paul brings new evidence to Perry and Della. Jerome Hill didn’t leave town after subletting to Shirley Tanner. He’s still in town. Perry looks at the gathered evidence, and says he has enough, but he’ll need to run one bluff. He goes to get receipts for department stores, jewelers, and other expenses, leaving Paul and Della behind to eat lunch.

Back at trial, Anita testifies that she’s never seen the robe with Fay’s laundry marks. Fay whispers to Mason that Anita is lying. Burger asks if Fay ever went out on dates with anyone other than Dane Grover, but Anita avoids answering the question. On cross, Mason asks Anita about the salary that Fay and Anita both receive, as they work in the same place. He asks how Fay couldn’t afford a new trousseau, but Anita could afford the expensive gifts she has in her possession.

Anita gets flustered, and Perry suggests that she was the one having the affair with Clement. And in an attempt to tarnish Fay’s good name, she doctored the chocolate and took some herself after substituting Fay’s clothes with her own. He says she did this because she was trying to steal Dane Grover. Desperate, Anita leaps up and runs to the open court window, threatening to jump out. But Perry’s not finished with her yet, as he makes one final bluff to prove who really killed Carver Clement...

In Summation

If I had a nickel for every time in a Perry Mason episode someone gave themselves an alibi by putting a sleeping agent in chocolate, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. I don’t think that’s giving anything away, by the way. The big blow-up I just described is, surprisingly, not the end of the mystery or a spoiler for who’s actually behind the whole thing.

Not that I’m comparing the two, but this episode has a more cohesive plot than “Silent Partner.” We get a much clearer view of the victim, and why someone would want to murder him. It’s a pretty clever way to set up someone as both a womanizer and a sleaze: Having him creep on a woman who couldn’t be less interested in his advances. What Anita saw in this guy, I’ll never know -- surely someone who could hook a rich guy, even briefly, can do better than this?

Anyway, while this episode does pull focus a bit from the defendant -- Fay is barely in this episode, despite fighting for her life against both a barbiturate overdose and a murder trial -- it does have a lot of distinctive elements and imagery. The lip print on the forehead of the dead man is a more distinctive visual element than many of the things in previous episodes.

There are times I question the district attornies’ judgement in prosecuting some of Perry’s clients. Sometimes the evidence is shaky, sometimes there’s no clear motive. But here, I can see why they went after Fay: The evidence is pretty damning, and it’s only when Perry points them out that you start to notice the flaws in the case. They do clearly have a means-motive-opportunity case, which helps with Tragg’s and Burger’s credibility: After all, they’re not cartoon villains, they’re trying to prosecute someone they see as a criminal.

PERRY: Cigarette? TRAGG: Oh no, no thanks. He’s worked that on me before. BURGER: Yes, I know. Pass them out, light them up. Meanwhile, he has time to think. PERRY: You’re acquiring wisdom, Hamilton. *lights his cigarette while Tragg and Burger roll their eyes*

Some of the side characters in episode are quite memorable: Aunt Louise, who saves her niece’s life by taking a very early flight, and who comes upon the horrifying scene of two young women unable to wake up (and for some reason calls a lawyer rather than an ambulance). The two witnesses, Vera and Don, seem like they stepped right out of a bad comedy show -- I feel like I met several Veras during my time in college.

There are a couple of things I wish they’d expanded on. Perry never gets to prove the relevance of the moving elevator in court, so I’m not sure where he was going with that. We also never learn anymore about Clement’s real wife and children -- you’d think his wife at least would be in court for the trial of his alleged murderer. But, beyond that, I think this is a solid episode that features some of Mason’s courtroom theatrics.

One of the better parts of this episode is that it shows more of the relationships between Mason and both Burger and Tragg. They may be sparring on the legal battleground, but they clearly all respect each other and Burger and Perry hold each other in high regard. Paul also mentions that Burger has political aspirations, even wishing to be governor. I almost wish that came up in the series again; instead Hamilton will remain a DA for several more years.

I particularly enjoy the two other men teasing Perry for his obvious stalling tactic of passing out cigarettes and lighting up to give himself time to think. I also appreciate that, when they’re off the clock or in private, they refer to each other by their first time. I’m not sure why no one ever calls Tragg by his first name (which is Arthur, by the way), but something tells me the old fox likes it that way.

Also, the final scene of the episode, where Fay kisses Perry on the cheek as thanks and he looks very pleased with himself while sporting a massive red kiss mark on his cheek, is one of the cuter scenes in this very not-cute series.

The Verdict

Judgement: ⚖⚖⚖ (three scales out of four) Mason must play the hero for a woman who goes through a lot right before her wedding, and succeeds in doing so despite some stiff opposition and an apparent mountain of evidence.

#perry mason #masonry monday #paul drake #della street #s01e08 #the case of the crimson kiss #raymond burr

1 note · View note