Frances Helm

            On Friday the cold virus was still clinging to my throat like slimy rats to a sewer wall. I didn’t quite have my voice back and fell short on the high notes during song practice. By the afternoon it had retreated to just a raw feeling in the throat and a tightness in the forehead. It was the best I’ve felt for a week.

            At around midday I went down to Freshco where I bought grapes, strawberries, raspberries, chicken drumsticks, ground beef, yogourt and coffee.

            I spent most of the day writing.

            That night I watched Perry Mason. Patricia is driving her mother Lucille home but has to enter the driveway at a bad angle because her stepfather Bertie’s car is parked too close to where she would have turned. She hits the hedge. When she sees Bertie she complains and so he goes out to move his car. In the driveway near the hedge that Patricia had hit is the body of his secretary, Robert. Bertie brings him into the house and says he thinks he’s dead. At Perry Mason's office Della shows Mason that he's been sent a cheque for "2500 clams". Mason informs her that when it's over a thousand they are not referred to as clams but rather dollars. I wonder if that amount distinction is really a thing. The cheque is a retainer from Lucille asking Mason to represent her or Patricia if the need arises. Mason calls Lucille but Bertie answers. On hearing that the call is from Mason’s office he immediately goes to see Mason and tells him that Lucille has run off with Robert. Bertie wants Mason to urge them to come back because he needs Robert for an important business deal. Mason goes to talk with Patricia, who thinks that she hit Robert with her car. She says that Robert came to with amnesia. Paul Drake finds Lucille is staying at the Mountain View Hotel. She is gone when they get there. Mason finds her at home and she says it’s preposterous that she would have run off with Robert. She said she had been waiting with Robert at the hotel for Bertie, he’d gone to the washroom and then disappeared. Lieutenant Tragg arrives to tell Lucille that her car was found at the bottom of a canyon with Robert’s dead body inside. Suddenly Tragg gets news that it wasn’t Robert’s dead body they’d found but rather Bertie’s. Lucille is arrested. Paul calls Mason to say he's found Robert in a ranch house, though he still has amnesia. Mason and Della go to the ranch house. Della pretends she is Robert's wife. Robert says, "I never saw you before in my life!" Mason asks, "How do you know?" "Well, ah, I just feel it!” Della says, “That’s the way it was last time! Come on, let’s go home!” They take Robert out of the ranch house. Robert is put in the hospital. Paul finds out that Robert has a girlfriend named Bernice who visits him there. Mason goes to see Bernice. She’s very beautiful, very charming, very confident and she has her story straight. Mason and Tragg go to challenge Robert on his claim of having amnesia and yet still knowing his girlfriend's phone number. He admits he was faking but explains that he was in a desperate situation. Bertie had been about to steal a fortune from his partner. He’d presented a fake report on a mining property declaring it worthless when it was worth millions. Robert confronted him about it and Bertie hit him over the head. That’s how Robert was found in the driveway. When he came to he faked amnesia in self-defence. After they’d taken him to the Mountain View Hotel Bertie came with a gun. He forced Lucille into the trunk of the car and made Robert drive. As they were going down the mountain road Robert slammed on the breaks, jarring Bertie. Robert grabbed the gun and hit him with it. Lucille somehow got out of the trunk by herself and ran. In court Mason suggests that the story of Lucille having been in the trunk was an invention by Robert and Bernice. That it was Bernice’s footprints going to and from where the car was supposed to be and that she could have stepped on a bush to avoid making footprints to make it look like the car had been there. But Mason also accuses Overbrook the rancher of killing Bertie because he was trying to take his land. He said that he could have deliberately made footprints and hidden others. Ultimately Lucille gets off and Burger thinks his new killer is Overbrook. Mason tells him that it might have been Robert since he might have actually killed him when he hit him with the gun. Burger walks away puzzled. Della asks who really killed Bertie and Mason says Overbrook but if he were to agree with Burger it would set a dangerous precedent.

            Bernice was played by Frances Helm, who was married to Brian Keith from 1948-1954. She did a lot of theatre work on Broadway before branching off into television.

            Patricia was played by the always interesting and alluring Yvonne Craig, who I will always remember as Batgirl.