- A new CEO has taken over control of a declining magazine with the intent to change it over the objections of the founder's son. The CEO, ruthlessly using blackmail to get what he wants, is murdered. The wife of the founder's son is charged.
- Aitken magazines are not profitable and former Editor-in-Chief Edmond Aitken no longer controls the company. The new CEO, Donald Fletcher, changes the tone of each mag which appalls the executive committee. At a party in his home, Fletcher insults Milly Nash, Edmond's sister-in-law, then his wife, Alyce Aitken, and Edmond punches him in the face. Poet Ben Nicholson consults Perry Mason about his firm, Pleiades Press, closely followed by Edmond Aitken, who discusses his problems with Perry. Later, Ben and Edmond meet at the Writers Club. Ben quotes the cynical E. A. Robinson poem "Richard Cory," which resonates with Edmond. Wishing to protect her investment and unaware of Edmond's plan to fight Fletcher, Alyce gives her proxy to the new CEO. That evening, Alyce sets out to retrieve her proxy. Edmond and Milly are in and out of the house and Fletcher winds up killed with his own gun. Lt. Tragg arrests Alyce who asks Perry to defend her but is less than forthright with her attorney.—richardann
- When Donald Fletcher takes over as the publisher of Aitken magazines, he has a very definite plan to increase circulation and ad revenue. In short, scantily clad women and a lot of articles about sex will be the new hallmark of all of their publications. Not everyone at the company is pleased with the new direction with some thinking they will lose their traditional customers and others thinking it's just smutty. Edmond Aitken and Fletcher even come to blows at a party after he is rude to Aitken's wife Alyce. Edmond is upset when he learns Alyce gave her proxy to Fletcher. Alyce she returns to his apartment to retrieve it only to find the publisher dead. She is charged with his murder and Perry Mason takes on her case.—garykmcd
- At Aiken Magazines, new top man Donald Fletcher (James Coburn) is about to make some big changes. He asks business manager Wendell Harding (Vinton Hayworth) about the circulation of Aitken's Weekly in 1946 (1,743,626) versus last month (564,082). Harding sheepishly adds that advertising is down 63%. Fletcher's solution is shocking to the old-timers. Aitken's Weekly will become a scandal rag, Women's Viewpoint will be about sex, etc. Edmond Aitken (Philip Abbott), son of the founder, has lost control of the company and can merely fume that Fletcher's brain is a swamp that spawns a virus. You can't talk to a virus - you have to exterminate it. Later, Fletcher is having a party, which Edmond attends with his wife Alyce (rhymes with "police") Aitken (Sara Shane) and her sister Milly Nash (Jennifer Howard). Fletcher is briefly called away by his streak-haired secretary Lori Stoner (Barbara Lawrence). A neighbor with a sick wife is calling to ask that the music at the party not be so loud, but Fletcher contemptuously dismisses the complaint. Back at the party, he makes a crack about Alyce, prompting Edmond to punch him, knocking him down. Alyce would prefer to leave this alone, but Milly pressures her to intervene, apologizing to Fletcher for Edmond's reaction.
The next day, Perry finishes a meeting with impoverished poetry magazine publisher Ben Nicholson (Paul Lambert) in time for an appointment with Edmond. Perry tells him that merely damaging Aitken's Magazines respectable reputation is not grounds for a suit, so they'll have to dig deeper into Fletcher's dealings if there's to be a legal action against him. Afterward, Edmond goes to his club. Nicholson has followed him there, apparently to offer him sympathy, and a drink. Back at home, Edmond is having another drink when his wife returns. He tells her that he wants to take on Fletcher in a proxy fight, and wants the proxies for her big block of stock. Unfortunately, she has already given them to Fletcher, under the theory that he knows how to restore the firms profitability and keep them all rich. Back at the club, Edmond admits to Nicholson that he has murder in his heart, and needs another drink.
The next day, Perry reads the headline of the L.A. Chronicle - Fletcher has been shot to death! Della tries to call Edmond, but Milly answers and says that he hasn't been home all night. She hangs up without taking a message, and tells Alyce that she must stick to the story that they (the sisters) were both home all night. Soon, Lt. Tragg arrives to arrest Alyce. Paul summarizes the case to Perry: Alyce's fingerprints were all over Fletcher's bachelor pad. There was a struggle. Fletcher was killed with his own gun. A neighbor said he saw a woman answering Alyce's description running out of the place around 3 AM, the time of Fletcher's death. Nicholson arrives to tell Perry that Edmond spent the night at his place and to deliver a message: Edmond wants him to defend Alyce. She's no help to herself, sticking to the story that she wasn't there. When Perry points out obvious holes in her account, she just complains that he's trying to confuse her.
Paul cozies up to Lori, who it turns out was until recently more than just Fletcher's secretary. Paul is interested in Fletcher's blackmail, but all he gets is that he had been pressuring business manager Harding, who apparently had accepted bribes to betray the company. However, Lori really only wants to complain about being dumped by Fletcher in favor of Alyce. She hints that she wasn't always as respectable as now, and that a man named Rudy Tripp (Sid Tomack) knows all about her. Rudy turns out to be a photographer who knew Alyce (whom he calls "Alice with a Y") as a model back when he was doing risqué "calendar pictures". She worked a great deal, being pressured by her money-grubbing sister Milly. Once, a "professor-type" man, presumably Edmond, showed up and pulled Alyce out of a shoot, infuriating Milly, who hit him with a spotlight. Perry tells Paul to follow up, going through all of Rudy's files for relevant photos. Later, Perry accuses Edmond of lying about his knowledge of Alyce's past, starting to recount the spotlight incident when Paul signals to him. Privately, he explains that the man in the story wasn't Edmond, but Nicholson.
At the preliminary hearing, Deputy D.A. Sampson (H.M. Wynant) has Lori testify that she overheard Fletcher on the phone with Alyce and make a date to see her at 9:30 PM. On cross-examination, she says she knew Fletcher was a blackmailer, and that two manilla envelopes stuffed with incriminating material are now missing. Harding testifies that he made a routine call to Fletcher at 11 PM, but Fletcher said he was busy because Alyce had just left but was coming back a little later. On cross, after attempting evasion, he admits that he had $93,000 salted away in various banks (prompting murmurs from the courtroom) and that Fletcher was looking into his affairs. Nicholson testifies that around 2:30 AM, a very drunk Edmond insisted on going home to his wife. They went there, but couldn't find Alyce, so they left at 3 AM, returning to Nicholson's place. On cross, he adds that Edmond peeked in Milly's room for a moment but left her alone, saying she was asleep. He reveals that his first meeting with Alyce was when he picked her up on a boat trip to Catalina. He was in love with her for a while, and even tried editing one of Fletcher's sleazy magazines. He couldn't take it, but when he returned to low-paying literary publishing, Alyce left him. He admits that he now wouldn't lift a finger to help her.
Mr. Robinson (Dave Willock), the neighbor with a sick wife, testifies that he looked outside his door because the loud music was bothering his wife again, and he saw someone was clattering out of Fletcher's place. He insists that this was Alyce or her twin, making special mention of her mink coat and blonde hair. Tragg testifies that Alyce's fingerprints were all over the record and manual turntable. During recess, Alyce admits she had been to see Fletcher twice that night, at 9 PM, leaving before 11, and later, leaving around 2 AM. She was trying to get her proxies back. She insists she only touched the record and stereo on her earlier visit, to turn off the loud music. She knew about the sick neighbor, and even took off her shoes after the 2 AM visit in order to leave quietly. Back in court, Milly testifies about Alyce coming home upset. On cross, she says that when Edmond peeked in her bedroom, she only pretended to be asleep. She wasn't sure of the time, but while the door was open she could hear the downstairs clock chime the half-hour. Nicholson then revises his testimony, now saying that he meant they arrived back at his place at 3, having left the Aitken home around 2:30.
Perry brings in a turntable like Fletcher's and demonstrates how to put a record on it and the tonearm on the record, without leaving fingerprints or disturbing existing ones. He says this could have been done by someone with access to the apartment, and confusing Robinson was possible for someone with a mink coat, and the ability to make her hair look blonde with the hairspray she uses to put that streak in her normal hairstyle! Lori confesses. She had even been a party to Fletcher's blackmail schemes when he summarily dumped and humiliated her. Killing him, she claims, was "the best thing I've ever done in my life." Back in his office, Perry explains that Robinson's talk of "clattering", combined with Alyce's mention of leaving quietly, got him thinking about the presence of another woman, and Lori fit the bill. It turns out that she was hiding in the guest room during Alyce's second visit and after Alyce left got into a fight with Fletcher that left him knocked out. She started the loud music (presumably in the careful way demonstrated by Perry) to mask the sound of the gunshot, then disguised herself as Alyce and left. Paul gives Perry the photos of Alyce's naughty past, which the attorney tosses in the trash. Paul points out that they represented hours of hard work. He had to sort through all of Rudy's files of girlie photos.
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