• “’I’ve got a cat for a client,’ Mason said grimly.
• “’Can a cat contest a will?’
• Mason’s face showed the determination of a born fighter. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said.”

Our next stop in the Mason Menagerie is Perry’s seventh adventure and also perhaps the most consequential and emotionally satisfying of his career (okay, maybe that’s a personal preference, animal-wise), centering as it does on the welfare of a cat named Clinker. It’s Clinker’s owner, however, who consults the attorney. Charles Ashton was once the vigorous caretaker for wealthy lawyer Peter Laxter, until an automobile accident left him with a shriveled leg. Laxter, who was driving the car, refused to pay Ashton’s expenses (he had his reasons), and yet he arranged through his will for Ashton to have a permanent home and a job caretaking at Laxter’s city estate for as long as he was able to work.

It is a cushy job: the Laxter family, consisting of Peter, his three grown grandchildren, and assorted servants, reside in their country home in Carmencita, while Ashton lives alone in the city house. Recently, however a fire has torn through the Carmencita mansion (note: I read this one months before the tragic Southern California fires) and evidently burned its master to a crisp. Now the two grandsons, both heirs, have moved into the city house, while the granddaughter, mysteriously disinherited, has disappeared. The heirs seem to resent being saddled with a crippled caretaker for the rest of his life, and they torment Ashton by demanding he get rid of his beloved Persian cat. If the caretaker refuses, the older grandson has threatened to poison poor Clinker.

I’m sorry to report that Della Street, normally the perfect secretary, for once displays a cruel streak by suggesting that the Chief is too important to bother with a cat. And that’s when Perry proves why he has earned my love and respect as the world’s best criminal attorney and all-around hero of the people and the felines:

“An old man, a crank . . . probably friendless. His benefactor is dead. The cat represents the only living thing to which he’s attached. Most lawyers would laugh the case out of the office. If some lawyer took the case, he wouldn’t know where to begin. God knows there’s no precedent to guide him. No, Della, this is one of those cases that seems so trivial to the lawyer, but means so much to the client. A lawyer isn’t like a shopkeeper who can sell his wares or not as he chooses. He holds his talents in trust for the unfortunate.”

This is just the sort of odd matter that would interest Perry Mason, like the mysterious behavior of a German Shepherd in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), which I’ve skipped over because I read it recently. (You can find out my feelings about it here.) He tells a doubtful Della: “I don’t want to work. I want to . . .play hooky. I want to do something I shouldn’t.” Della’s solution is for Perry to go on a luxury cruise – but as far as I can tell, that won’t happen until 1938 in The Case of the Substitute Face. But Perry is needed in town, since this “minor” matter quickly escalates due to the greediness of Laxter’s grandsons and the machinations of their lawyer, an odious shyster named Shuster who it turns out is an old nemesis of Mason’s: “He’s a shyster, a suborner of perjury and a jury-briber. He’s a disgrace to the profession, and he gets us all into disrepute.” Shuster is such a deliciously smarmy creep that Della changes her mind and urges Perry to take the case. 

Shuster’s plan is to use the fate of the poor cat as leverage in order to shore up his clients’ claims on their grandfather’s fortune, while Mason counters by deciding to break the will and see to it that the disinherited granddaughter gets all the money. Of course, Mason puts Paul Drake on the case right away. This early incarnation of Paul is less physically attractive than he would become (Gardner mentions his “pop eyes” several times), but he is wonderfully playful. His unearthing of the missing granddaughter is especially fun, and it helps that Winifred Laxter might be the most genuinely delightful young woman that I have met so far in my reading of Mason’s adventures. 

Kindly without being naïve, Winifred sees her disinheritance as the best thing that could have happened to her; it leads her to become a successful entrepreneur and to stand on her own two feet. Once pursued by two suitors, her choice was made easier when one of them saw no value in a non-heiress and the other did. You can sense early on that one or both of these young people will end up being defended by Mason on a charge of murder, and for once you like these kids so much that their fate matters more than usual. 

Winifred and her beau’s happiness matters a lot to Mason as well, and he goes to extreme lengths to protect them, including the kidnapping of a certain cat and the staging of a honeymoon between Perry Mason and Della Street! This last maneuver is extraordinary in what it reveals about Della’s feelings for Perry and what a funny, warm, adoring secretary she is. It almost makes up for her cavalier attitude toward Clinker! 

What little courtroom action there is occurs in the penultimate chapter, but it’s nicely dramatic and culminates with the prosecutor thinking he’s being clever by calling the defense attorney to the stand and then having his case shattered when Mason reveals the true solution. That solution is no more ridiculous than what can be found in half the Golden Age mysteries out there – but it’s ridiculous nonetheless, involving three possible murders and several killers, all of them acting independently, including their gunning for the defendant. At least the cat figures prominently in the case and is not just a cute symbol to put in the book’s title. Clinker goes a long way toward helping Mason solve the case, which doesn’t surprise this cat lover in the least! 

“The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat” premiered on March 7, 1959, as the nineteenth episode of the second season. The teleplay takes the multiple elements of this complex novel, throws them up in the air, and then utilizes whatever it manages to catch. There’s only one murder, and it’s of a character who didn’t die in the novel. The book’s victim becomes the defendant, and the book’s defendant becomes a bit of a dick. One nice thing is that the central part of the nurse is played by Maxine Cooper, who starred as Velda, Mike Hammer’s sweaty secretary, in Kiss Me Deadly. The part of Winifred was played by Judy Lewis, who had the distinction of being the love child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable. 

The more you know!

Next month, the menagerie shifts point of view to one who tawt they taw a putty tat! Yes, this client is for the birds!! See you then!