Angie

            I skipped the food bank again this Saturday to free up time for working on my essay. At around 11:00 I went to No Frills where I bought raspberries, blackberries, green grapes, a persimmon, a bag of potatoes and a pork sirloin half roast.

            I spent a little over an hour sparring with my essay, with less than four days before the deadline.

            I finished reading aloud the required Samuel Taylor Coleridge selections for my course. The only thing I like by Coleridge is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". He's not as good a poet as Wordsworth and I don't even like Wordsworth that much, but he is more imaginative than Wordsworth.

            I finished the first month of the tablets I’ve been taking for my toenail infection. I’d been expecting by this time, since I'm a third of the way through, to be seeing a little stripe of clear toenail on the bottom third of my big toes, but so far I haven’t noticed any difference.

            I watched Perry Mason. A woman named Marian is being blackmailed by a man named Carlin for $1,000 a month and it's been going on for ten months. He offers to turn over the complete Charles Gallagher file for a lump sum of $10,000. He arranges for her to meet him with the money the next night at a certain French restaurant. When she arrives the next night though, Carlin calls the restaurant to leave a message for her to come to his address instead. Just then, Perry Mason and Della Street arrive for dinner and Marian hears his name. When Mason and Dell a look at the menu they are surprised that the coffee at $1 is so expensive. This is 1958. A phone is brought to Mason's table and Marian, without identifying herself, speaks to him from the restaurant phone booth. She has the waiter bring two envelopes to the table. One of them contains a $500 retainer for his services. The other she wants Mason to deliver to Carlin’s address in exchange for the Gallagher file. He agrees, but when he goes to Carlin’s house he denies that he knows anything about the file. After Mason leaves, Marian’s husband Arthur steps out from another room where he’s been listening. Arthur has been in on the blackmailing of Marian but has found out that Carlin has been getting twice as much as they’d agreed and that Carlin owes him $5000. He says he’ll be back in a couple of hours for his money. Mason comes back to watch Carlin’s house. He sees a woman arrive, ring the bell and be received. After a while there is an explosion in the house. The shot in the head and then burned dead body the fire department brings out can’t be identified facially but by his age and body type he is identified as Carlin. Mason's detective, Paul Drake, manages to track down Marian's address. Mason goes there and sees that a car has recently left the driveway because it had been raining up till n hour before and there is a car shaped dry spot. Inside the house they find the dead body of Marian’s husband. They find a note for Arthur from Marian saying she is catching the 20:00 bus to Harristown. Paul flies to Harristown to meet the bus but as soon as Marian gets off she is arrested. Paul talks to a woman named Diana who is willing to sign a statement that Marian was on the bus with her from LA. Mason goes to see Marian in jail but she refuses to tell him the identity of Charles Gallagher. He tells her that both Carlin and Arthur were killed with the same gun but she doesn’t know anything about it. Charles Gallagher comes to Mason’s office when he’s not there and explains that a few years ago he escaped from prison. He tells Della that he’s going to turn himself in to the DA but she warns him that would only help to incriminate Marian because they’ll believe that she killed Carlin and Arthur to protect her brother. She tells him that he can’t discuss it with Mason because as an officer of the court he would be forced to turn him in. He asks what he should do but Della tells him she’s not permitted to advise him but with her eyes she indicates that he should leave by the back door. In court the DA tries to prove that Marian did not get on the bus for Harristown in LA because if she had she would not have had time to commit the murders. He puts a pilot on the stand who says that he flew a woman matching Marian’s general description, except that she was wearing dark glasses and a hat, to a location between LA and Harristown. When Mason put Diana on the stand and finishes questioning her about what happened when she got off the bus, Burger asks her if she got on the bus in LA but Mason objects, saying the question is improper. One can’t cross-examine a witness except on testimony elicited on direct examination. Then Mason said that Burger could make Diana a witness for the prosecution and so that’s what Burger does. He asks her when she first saw Marian. Diana changes her testimony from the statement she’d written previously and now says that Marian didn’t get on the bus in LA. Mason cross-examines and asks her about her eye-patch. Burger objects for the same reasons that Mason had objected previously but Mason argues that since his question was about seeing, asking about her eye is fair game. The judge agrees. Mason gets Diana to take off her eye patch and identify several people that are beckoned to stand. One of the people is the parking lot attendant at the airport. There was no way for her to recognize him unless she had parked Marian’s car there. She admits to driving Marian's car but she says she didn't kill Arthur. Mason asks who did and she points out Carlin, who is sitting in disguise in the courtroom.

            Marian was played by the very versatile Angie Dickinson. This was one year before she received the Golden Globe for Best New Star for role in Rio Bravo.