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rachelkaser · 2 years

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Masonry Monday: The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister

Mason’s latest client, Harriet Bain, is beset by trouble from all sides, as her sick father is being blackmailed and her fiancé seems interested in her stunning stepsister. Then the ex-partner behind the blackmail is murdered, and Harriet’s fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.

Who’s Who

Perry’s client: Harriet Bain, a plain girl who gets involved in a blackmail scheme to protect her father, which spirals into a murder

The victim: J.J. Stanley, a grifter who once helped Harriet’s father embezzled $50,000 from a bank and who’s forced to blackmail him ten years later

Suspects: Sylvia Bain, Harriet’s stepsister, who’s unusually controlling and stern with her sister and encourages the wayward fiancé's interest Ned Bain, Harriet’s father and Sylvia’s stepfather, who’s supposedly too sick to get out of bed . . . until he needs to see his blackmailing ex-partner Arthur West, an unscrupulous private eye who’s the primary instigator of the blackmail scheme Addison Doyle, Harriet’s roguish fiancé, whose mercenary interests in Harriet become a little too apparent after she’s arrest

The Setup

A man sitting in the lobby of a boarding house follows a drunk back to his room and rudely wakes him. The man introduces himself as a private investigator named Arthur West -- and he knows the drunk is J.J. Stanley. West says he knows that J.J. embezzled $50,000 from the Texas National Bank ten years previously. West says J.J.’s partner in crime was a now-successful businessman named Ned Bain. Texas National would reward West if he tells them, but he thinks he can get more money out of Bain. While J.J. is reluctant, West bullies him into complying.

A young woman, rather unflatteringly dressed [Editor’s note: I’m not being mean -- I promise this is important.] in a Citroen car arrives at the Colegrove Apartments and goes to 2A. West, who lives in the apartment, plays her a taped recording of a phone call between Ned Bain and J.J. Stanley. On the recording, Bain tacitly admits to the embezzlement charges. The woman is Harriet Bain, Ned’s daughter, and she’s horrified and runs sobbing from the apartment when West thwarts her attempt to destroy the tape.

Sometime later, in Perry Mason’s office, Della is getting some plane tickets together for him. Gertie tells her a woman wants to see Perry, and Della goes to ask if she can help instead. The woman is Harriet, who is devastated to hear Perry is shortly to leave for an extended trip to Europe. Seeing how upset Harriet is, Della invites her into the office and offers to listen to her story.Harriet calms down and tells Della she’s engaged to a man named Addison Doyle, whom her sister introduced her to.

Della asks her what’s wrong, and Harriet tells her about the blackmail. Her father has a heart condition and Harriet takes care of him, hence why she took West’s call. Not only could her father’s condition worsen if the blackmail proceeds, she’s afraid Doyle, who’s from an old money family, will break off their engagement if there’s any scandal. Della is sympathetic and, shortly after, pleads Harriet’s case to Perry.

While Perry’s not pleased to put off his trip to Europe, he’s intrigued when both Della and Paul have opinions on the case. Paul knows West by reputation, and he’s pulled this trick before: He pretends to negotiate the blackmailer’s price to the victim, then charges the victim a fee for acting in their interest, so he gets paid by both of them. He tells Della to postpone his flight (she already did that), to tell Harriet to meet him, and to get him the most powerful magnet possible on short notice that can fit into a cigarette case.

Enter Perry Mason, Attorney at Law

Sometime later, Perry and Harriet are back in West’s apartment, listening to the recording. He tells West he wants to inspect the tape to make sure it isn’t spliced. West won’t let Perry touch the tape, but he hold it out for inspection, and Perry leans in while taking out a cigarette. He asks how much J.J. will take, and West offers to bargain him down from $25k to $20k. He asks to hear the tape one more time, and this time the tape is completely silent. Perry and Harriet leave, saying they’ll reconvene when West gets the tape working again. After they go, West takes out a booze bottle and takes the recorder across the hall to J.J.’s room.

Back in Perry’s office, he explains he used the magnet to wipe the tape. Della asks if he destroyed evidence, but Perry’s convinced it was just a copy, and he wants to force West to use his original recording. West calls and asks Mason to visit, revealing he has the original copy. Harriet enters, upset -- her stepsister, Sylvia, angry that Harriet hired a lawyer, told their father. Ned Bain wants to meet Mason. Della calls the airline and postpones Perry flight again.

At the Bain house, Perry meets Sylvia Bain, who’s rather glamorously attired and says she’s against involving a lawyer in a family matter. Addison Doyle enters and Harriet introduces him to Perry before they go upstairs to meet Bain. Bain, who’s bedbound, says the blackmail is fraud -- J.J. backed him in a wildcat oil scheme that hit pay dirt made full return on the investment. He’s not going to pay the blackmail, but he won’t go to the police for fear of a scandal disrupting Harriet’s marriage.

Perry promises to return the next day, and asks if Bain knows where J.J. lives -- Bain says he doesn’t. As they’re leaving, they catch a glimpse of Addison and Sylvia, laughing and leaning in a little too close to each other downstairs. Harriet looks sad, but not surprised, and returns to her dad’s bedside. Perry goes downstairs, interrupting the liaison, and walks out. Doyle asks Sylvia why she let Harriet, whom she supposedly controls, get Mason involved.

Just past 11pm that night, Ned Bain gets out of bed, fully clothed. He picks up a monogrammed briefcase and sneaks out of the house. Harriet just catches a glimpse of him as he walks out of the front door. Bain arrives at the Colgrove Apartments and rings J.J.’s doorbell, across from West. J.J. lets him in, and Bain tells him that he’s going to finish this whole mess that night, and shows J.J. what’s in the briefcase. Downstairs, Bain’s cabbie notices a Citroen car pull up behind him. Bain returns, sans briefcase, and asks the driver to take him home.

The Murder

The next morning, Paul tells Perry that he’s discovered J.J. lives in the apartment across from West’s. They’re meeting Harriet at West’s apartment. He offers to accompany Perry and Della to the meetup, but Perry doesn’t think there will be trouble. At West’s apartment, a note tacked to the door has Perry’s name on it. In the note, West says he’ll be late and for Perry to let himself in. Della senses a trap, as West sounds like he wants them to search the apartment. They’re about to leave when there’s a loud scream from inside the apartment.

The door opens and Harriet comes flying out into Perry’s arms. She found the body of who she thinks is J.J. Stanley in the kitchen. Perry confirms this was a trap and goes to check the other apartment. It’s unlocked. He tells Della to stay in the hallway, and to pretend if West returns that they just arrived and were reading the note. He enters J.J.’s apartment and looks around. He notes the massive deep freeze full of food in the kitchen.

Della signals to him, and Perry sees her, Harriet, and West enter the apartment. He follows them in a second later. West says he was at a poker game and goes to make coffee. He enters the kitchen and sees J.J.’s body on the floor under the table. West goes to call the police, and Perry tells Della to cancel the trip. Later, Tragg and the medical examiner look over the body -- the latter gives a preliminary finding of death by ice pick to the neck, with the time of death around 3am that morning. An officer comes in with just such an ice pick, which he found in J.J. Stanley’s apartment. Tragg tells him to examine it for prints.

Later, in Perry’s office, Paul reports that Tragg knows Perry searched J.J.’s apartment, thanks to West leaving a tape recorder running by door. Tragg also fingerprinted the entire Bain family. Perry gets a phone call -- Ned Bain’s just had a heart attack, and they fear it might be fatal. He rushes to the Bain house, where the doctor tells them Bain will just barely pull through. The doctor says a shock or exertion could have caused it, and then he hands Harriet a tape he found under Bain’s pillow. Perry says he’ll take it for safekeeping.

Perry asks Harriet if she heard her father leave the house the night before, and Harriet says she didn’t. Downstairs, they meet Doyle and Sylvia, and Perry asks where the latter was the night before -- Doyle admits on her behalf that she was at his apartment, to Harriet’s shock. She walks Perry to the door, where they meet Tragg. He relieves Perry of the tape, and arrests Harriet on suspicion of murder -- her fingerprints are all over the ice pick.

Mason visits Doyle’s shoebox apartment, and reprimands him for not visiting Harriet in jail. Doyle says he’s not interested in comforting her, as despite his family name he’s a very poor man. He outright admits that his hipster writer vibe is just a mask to attract a rich woman, and that he’s prepared to shift his attentions to Sylvia. Perry warns him Sylvia might not be as interested as Doyle thinks. Later, Della tells Perry she’s ordered a copy of a specific book he wants and will bring it to court.

The Trial

In court, Burger asks Tragg about the ice pick and enters it as People’s Exhibit A. Tragg says it was an implement from the Bain family’s kitchen, and had Harriet’s fingerprints on it. They also found Harriet’s cigarette lighter in West’s apartment. On cross, Mason notes it's not unusual for Harriet’s fingerprints to be on an ice pick from her own kitchen. He asks if the police were able to transport the ice pick without destroying Harriet’s prints -- they were. Mason asks then, if they could do it, why not someone else who wanted to frame Harriet?

Burger then questions the medical examiner, Dr. Hanover. The doctor found two puncture wounds in the front of J.J.’s neck which caused death by hemorrhage. He also says the ice pick has bloodstains on it, the blood being J.J.’s rare AB blood type. At Burger’s request, he explains postmortem lividity and rigor mortis, and how he used them to determine the time of death at 3am. On cross, Mason asks about other factors, and Dr. Hanover says he also used body temperature. Mason asks if his calculation could be thrown off by environmental temperature changes, and the doctor says they could.

Burger then asks for the court’s indulgence, as his next witness is coming in on a stretcher. Mason, realizing this is Ned Bain, immediately objects to the cruelty of bringing a sick man to court, but Burger hands the judge a doctor’s affidavit that Bain can testify. The judge allows it, though he quells Burger’s intent to treat Bain as a hostile witness. Bain is brought into court and sworn in. Burger asks him about the blackmail scheme and whether it was based in truth. Bain won’t answer, even though the statute of limitations has expired.

The judge asks about the relevance, and Burger clarifies that, if Harriet knew the allegations were true, she’d have a motive for murder. Harriet stands up, sobbing, and admits that she knew. Burger asks when Bain last saw Stanley, and Bain says it was the night he was murdered. On cross, Mason asks why Bain saw Stanley, and Bain says it was to pay him off. Mason asks if Harriet knew he was doing this, and Bain says yes -- she got the money from the bank. Mason thanks him, and notes this means Harriet had no motive to kill Stanley.

The next witness is the cab driver who drove Bain to the apartment building. He said he was tailed the whole way there, and noted the Citroen’s license number. It was Harriet’s car. On cross, Mason asks the cabbie if he could see the driver’s face, but the cabbie says it was too dark. Paul shortly after enters with the book Perry requested, and hands it to him as Burger is questioning West on the stand.

West claims he was approached by J.J. with the tape, and admits that he was party to the blackmail scheme. Burger tries to identify this as Harriet’s motive. On cross, Mason has to be pulled away from his book to question West. He asks why West was paying for J.J.’s apartment and food -- and why he bought the deep freeze in the kitchen. He submits an alternate theory: Whoever killed Stanley placed his body in the freezer in order to phony up the time of death and make themselves an alibi. The judge is intrigued, and says he’d like to examine the freezer personally...

In Summation

Harriet Bain unfortunately joins the list of Perry Mason clients who lie to their brilliant lawyer for seemingly no reason than to make his job more difficult -- she lies that her father left the house and that she knew the story behind the blackmail was true. However, some other points of the episode are less clear, and that’s where the case becomes so confusing as to be tedious. But we’ll get into that shortly.

This case possibly has the greatest proliferation so far of unlikeable characters. Addison Doyle, Arthur West, and Sylvia Bain are all obvious in their unpleasantness. But even Harriet doesn’t get off unscathed, as it’s not even clear why she’s lying to Perry about the truth behind the blackmail when she’s the one who brought him in to deal with the blackmailer in the first place. Ned Bain sucks for not simply sending a rat like Doyle packing. Ironically, the only person who comes off easy here is the murder victim, J.J. Stanley.

Actually, now that I think of it, the opening scene doesn’t really make sense. Stanley point-blank refuses to help West blackmail Ned Bain, even saying he’d rather go to jail (and, judging by his living situation, he’s not really that far removed from three hots and a cot) West retorts, “For once in your life, you’ll do as your told,” and I fail to see why that would change the answer at all.

I know jealousy is a real emotion that people feel, but something about the way it’s portrayed in Perry Mason, at least with regards to women, always rubs me the wrong way. It’s almost always an older woman who wants the attention of a man who hasn’t noticed her, being jealous of the younger female lead who’s succeeded. This episode is even titled after said jealousy -- and I won’t spoil, but we later find out that the motives of the older woman in this case aren’t what they appear to be.

One of the reasons this episode doesn’t really work for me is the way they talk about Harriet. Everyone acts like she’s uglier than a warty toad, could never have a chance of marrying, and should do everything she can to hold onto Doyle’s superficial attention. But she’s played by the lovely Virginia Vincent, and even the most unflattering clothes and makeup can only do so much to make her look plain. In the final scene, the “makeover” she gets from Della only consists of a little makeup and taking off the cloche hat she usually wears.

The other reason is that the tape in question, which is the impetus behind all of this, isn’t as incriminating as the episode behaves. Ned Bain never outright admits on it than he embezzled money -- both he and J.J. are just vague enough that I am hesitant to believe it would hold up in court. The worry is not that he’ll be prosecuted, but that the bank will bring a civil suit against him. I still doubt that the tape would be enough evidence to hold up, even in civil court.

Which bring me to another question: Why was Ned Bain planning to pay J.J. off directly? The whole thing was West’s idea — it’s not like there’s any real way to cut him out when he’s the one holding the blackmail evidence, dubious though it may be. Also, it’s never explicitly stated how Bain was able to get dressed in a full suit, take a taxi across town, pay off a blackmailer, return, and then wait almost a full day before he had a heart attack when the doctor says he was in such delicate condition he couldn’t even walk to the bathroom.

This is the first time a judge in a Perry Mason case has gone to the scene to inspect evidence personally. As I have stated before, I’m not a lawyer, but even with my decent layman’s understanding of the law, I have no idea if this is a thing they can do. I would presume that, with the judge, bailiff, and clerk present, all the necessary court elements are there. The only time I’ve ever seen this happen is in a few episode of the old Animal Cops show, where a judge ruling on a case involving horses would go to the stables to see their condition.

One final note: This final scene of the episode might be one of the silliest ever. First we see Della waylay Perry, who’s finally about to depart on his long-awaited London trip (how a legal conference can go on long enough to outlast a murder investigation and trial is beyond me) to show off the “makeover” she’s given Harriet. Then she mentions that she got Harriet onto the same plane as Perry, and apparently expects her employer to be Harriet’s chaperone on a European vacation (Paul, briefly enchanted by Harriet’s new look, apparently thinks she means him at first). I know Della and Perry’s professional relationship is fairly tight, but I think that’s crossing a few boundaries.

The Verdict

Judgement: ⚖ (one scale out of four) A “homely” woman who’s beautiful is the least of this episode’s problems, and the case is a mess from the outset as there’s insufficient evidence behind both the blackmail and the murder conviction. The side characters provide the only real color in the whole episode.

#perry mason #masonry monday #raymond burr #paramount plus #della street #paul drake #s01e21 #the case of the green-eyed sister

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