“Yes,” Serle said. “I always eat them.”
“And,” Mason observed, “you also swallowed the bones from the chops, did you not?”
Serle’s eyes stared at Mason in speechless fear.
Mason said, “You’ll have to try and do better on your next murder, Serle. When you scraped the plates down the garbage chute, you made a fatal error in neglecting to remember that it is customary to leave bones on the plates.”
Mason smiled affably at Judge Knox, and said, “It is the contention of the defense that when Alden Leeds arrived at the apartment, Hogarty was dead. It is, I presume, true that Milicant was really Hogarty. He had been blackmailing this defendant, and it was only natural, although perhaps not legally proper, for the defendant to try and regain possession of papers which he knew were in possession of the dead man, papers which would make public the very disclosures he had sought to suppress. And so the defendant searched the apartment — which accounts for his fingerprints. He made a frantic effort to find those papers.”
“But,” Kittering countered, jumping to his feet, “those papers were papers which connected him with the attempted murder of Bill Hogarty, with the stealing of his property, and...”
“Oh, no,” Mason said with a smile. “ Those papers related to an entirely different matter. The defendant found them, thank you. They have been destroyed.”
And Mason sat down.
Serle yelled, “It’s a lie!”
Kittering said, “Your Honor, I object to...”