The Case of the Daring Divorcee (25 page)

Banner came forward and was sworn.

"Your name is Huntley L. Banner, you are an attorney at law duly licensed to practice in this state?" Hamilton Burger asked.

"Yes, sir."

"And during his lifetime, you were the attorney for Garvin S. Hastings?"

"During the latter part of his life, yes."

"Did you prepare a will for Garvin Hastings?"

"I did."

"That will was executed?"

"It was."

"Did you prepare another will for Hastings?"

"I did."

"Was that will executed?"

"No."

"Directing your attention to the executed will," Hamilton Burger said, "I show you this copy of a will purporting to be signed by Garvin S. Hastings, as testator, and by yourself and one Elvina Mitchell as witnesses, and under the terms of which will all the property is left to Minerva Shelton Hastings. Is that the will you refer to as the executed will?"

"It is."

"Will you please tell the Court the circumstances under which that will was executed?"

"Mr. Hastings came to my office. He had previously instructed me to prepare such a will. I had the will prepared, I handed it to him, he read it, he executed it in the presence of Elvina Mitchell and myself, he stated that it was his last will and testament, he asked us to subscribe our names as witnesses and we subscribed our names as witnesses in the presence of Garvin Hastings and in the presence of each other."

"Now, what about this other will that was not signed?" Hamilton Burger asked.

"Garvin Hastings intended to make another will, leaving the bulk of his property to the defendant, Adelle Hastings, but differences developed before such a will was executed.

"I may state that I drew up two or three tentative wills, that there was some question as to exactly what property Garvin Hastings wanted to leave her. He wanted to leave some property to trusted employees in his business, men who had been with him for years.

"While this matter was being held in abeyance Garvin Hastings decided that his marriage was not working out the way he had anticipated. He suggested that his wife, the defendant in this case, go to Las Vegas, establish a residence and get a divorce. It was, as far as I know, a very friendly and amicable separation.

"However, it was necessary to negotiate a property settlement in connection with such divorce action and an arrangement was made by which Hastings was going to pay her a sum of money over a period of ten years and leave her a further sum in his will. Because those sums were the subject of negotiation, Hastings asked me to postpone drawing the will in final form."

"And that was the status of the matter at the time of his murder?" Hamilton Burger asked.

"Yes."

Hamilton Burger said, "This will is a certified copy. Where is the original?"

"The original is on file in the probate department. Minerva Shelton Hastings, the executrix in that will, is seeking to have the will admitted to probate and I am representing her as her attorney."

Hamilton Burger said, "I offer this certified copy in evidence, if the Court please."

"Do you have any objection, Mr. Mason?" Judge Fallon asked.

"I don't know, Your Honor. I want to cross-examine this witness on the voir dire before stipulating that the will may be admitted."

"Very well, cross-examine."

"Elvina Mitchell is your secretary?" Mason asked Banner.

"Yes, sir."

"She is in court?"

"No, she is not."

"She isn't?" Mason asked in some surprise. "She is a subscribing witness to the will. Do you understand that she is not to testify?"

"There has been no request for her to appear and testify. No subpoena has been served on her."

"In that event," Mason said, "and as part of my examination on the voir dire, I want to have a subpoena issued for Elvina Mitchell. I want her to testify."

"Surely," Hamilton Burger said, "this will, in view of the testimony of this witness, is certainly authenticated sufficiently to enable me to offer it in evidence. If counsel wishes to object on the ground that it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, that is one thing. But as far as the authenticity of the document is concerned, it has been established.

"This court has stated the probate issues are not to be tried here. I have shown this will to be properly authenticated."

Mason said, "On voir dire I am entitled to take this document by its four corners and examine it. It is, if the Court please, an unusual document. It is a will made in favor of a wife who assured the testator she had secured a divorce from him."

"That's not in evidence," Hamilton Burger said, "and the will was executed before there was any talk of divorce."

"I'm going to put it in evidence," Mason said, "before I permit this will to be introduced."

Judge Fallon looked down at Hamilton Burger. "This is a peculiar situation," he said. "Apparently we have here a will made prior to the marriage of the testator to the defendant, leaving all the estate to a former wife who presumably was divorced. Can you explain that, Mr. Burger?"

"I think it can be explained," Hamilton Burger said. "The woman was not divorced at that time. She has never been divorced. But I don't think we have to go into it at this time."

"Well," Judge Fallon said, "if the document is to be introduced in evidence in this case, and the defendant wants to bring out facts in connection with that document before it is introduced, I certainly am disposed to let the defense go ahead.

"The Court will take a thirty-minute recess and that will enable the defense to have ample opportunity to subpoena Elvina Mitchell for the defendant's voir dire. Court will take a thirty-minute recess."

"My secretary can't leave the office at this time," Banner said. "I have some very important matters there and we can't leave the office unattended."

"You've completed your testimony," Judge Fallon said. "You can go back and sit in the office. This matter pending before this Court is quite important, and there's certainly something sufficiently peculiar about the execution of such a will so that this Court is going to give the defense every opportunity on voir dire to inquire into the circumstances."

"He can only inquire into the execution of the will, if the Court please, not into the circumstances surrounding it."

"We'll argue that point when we come to it," Judge Fallon said. "Court is going to take a recess for thirty minutes and defendant will have an opportunity to serve a subpoena on Elvina Mitchell and have her here. If she is not here at that time, Court will take a further recess until she is here."

Judge Fallon got up and left the bench.

Banner hurried down to have a whispered conference with Hamilton Burger.

Mason turned to Della Street, said, "Della, I have a hunch."

"What is it?" she asked.

"Telephone the office," Mason said. "Tell Gertie to grab a cab and come up here. Now, when Gertie comes I want her seated, not with the spectators, but over to the right in the jury box. I want her to have one of the office stenographers with her. Just the two of them seated there in the jury box."

"Will Judge Fallon permit it?" Della asked.

"Judge Fallon will permit it," Mason said. "I'll ask him for permission in chambers."

Paul Drake pushed his way forward and said, "Perry, is there any reason why Adelle Hastings would have taken an airplane late Monday afternoon and flown to Las Vegas?"

Mason frowned and said, "I don't know, Paul. I had assumed from what she had told me that she had taken her car and driven to Las Vegas. But apparently she didn't start until after she had gone to Ventura to close the deal on this piece of property on which she was negotiating with the advice and assistance of Simley Beason.

"That property was probably one of the big things on her mind. It was for that reason she was carrying a large sum of cash in her purse. She wanted to make a downpayment which would bind the deal. Why do you ask, Paul?"

Drake said, "I found out one of the things the prosecution has in reserve. That survey by the Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas was on the up-and-up. They were making a survey to find out how many charter planes came in, in the course of a single evening; how many passengers they brought in, and just how important the charter service was."

"Go ahead," Mason said.

Drake said, "They have a witness under subpoena, a charter pilot named Arthur Cole Caldwell. He has a flying service and he left Los Angeles at five-thirty Monday night with a woman who had telephoned in a reservation for a charter plane. She wanted to fly to Las Vegas and wanted the plane to be ready to get into the air the minute she got there. She had telephoned at two o'clock in the afternoon and asked particularly to have this plane ready."

"If she was in such a hurry," Mason asked, "why didn't she leave earlier?"

"The prosecution's theory," Drake said, "is that Adelle was in your office and then went to see Simley Beason and arranged with him to steal the gun out of the handbag she had inadvertently left in your office; that she didn't have time to drive back to Las Vegas and then return to Los Angeles, so she chartered a plane."

"Will Caldwell identify her?" Mason asked.

"Apparently he will; although the woman who chartered the plane was wearing dark glasses at the time, and he admits he didn't get too good a look at her. However, he did charter a plane to someone who grabbed a taxi at the Las Vegas airport, went to Las Vegas, was in Las Vegas about an hour, then returned to the plane and was flown back to Los Angeles."

Mason's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Della Street and I took a plane only a little after that, Paul. We had a twinmotored plane."

"This was a twin-motored plane."

"We couldn't have been too far behind," Mason said.

"Just long enough for your client to get in, have a drink, undress and take a bath," Drake said.

Mason said, "It had been my idea that someone flew in to get Adelle's gun so it could have been substituted for the murder weapon and-"

"Exactly," Drake interrupted. "That's the prosecution's theory. Only they think that Adelle killed Hastings with his own gun, that she then intended to fly to Las Vegas, get her gun, substitute it for the fatal gun in her handbag and throw the fatal gun away where it would never be found.

"However, they think she was in such a hurry to put this through at split-second timing that she inadvertently left her handbag in your office and you uncovered the gun which was the real murder weapon. That meant her only hope was to get the gun out of her apartment, have Simley Beason get to your office early in the morning and make a substitution."

Mason thoughtfully digested the information, said, "How did Caidwell make the identification?"

"From a photograph," Drake said. "They put dark glasses on a photograph and Caldwell said it looked like the person he had flown to Las Vegas. They also let him peek into the detaining room and get a peek at her. You know how the police handle these things, Perry."

"What else have you found out, Paul?" Mason asked.

"That address in Carson City," Drake said. "Helen Drexel, Harley Drexel's daughter, is a friend of Connely Maynard. Her father had built a little house on the back of his lot. It was not the type of house that would readily rent to permanent residents, but it was an ideal place for persons who were coming to establish a six weeks' residence in order to be able to file suit for divorce.

"So Maynard quite naturally took it up with his girl friend, Elvina Mitchell, and she arranged to tout for the place and keep it filled up."

Mason's eyes narrowed. "Then, if Minerva Hastings went there to establish a residence in order to get her divorce, Minerva must have been friendly with Banner at that time."

"Or, with Banner's secretary," Drake said.

"Then Banner was representing Minerva all along and was responsible for the situation getting to a point where Hastings thought he was divorced, made a bigamous marriage and still had a legal wife in the background."

Drake nodded and said, "The friendship is between Helen Drexel and Elvina Mitchell. On the Monday in question, Helen Drexel had driven the family car in to do some shopping in Los Angeles. Since she always runs in to have a visit and a coffee break with Elvina Mitchell when she's in town, and since the parking lot next to the building here was as centrally located as any, with reference to the shopping district on the one hand and Banner's office on the other, she parked her car there and left it there while she did her shopping. It doesn't have anything to do with the murder case but it's an interesting fact, just the same, and it shows some sort of a tie-in."