The Case of the Demure Defendant

Nadine, a young woman, is the perpetual unpaid servant of her rich and unkind uncle. She tells him she is soon to be married and he will need somebody else to tend to his needs. He responds by showing her a copy of something and saying that if she walks out on him he will send that to her fiance. Nadine seems very distraught by this turn of events.

Later, when she visits her fiance's chemistry lab - he's a chemist himself - she steals some cyanide. Her uncle drops dead of cyanide poisoning shortly after she serves him some soup. She has a mental breakdown upon his sudden death, is hospitalized, and confesses to her uncle's murder, although she is in a distressed state. Perry is on the case.

Nadine is made up to be a rather plain young woman. She has a very short haircut that does not complement her and she wears clothes that don't complement her. She seems to have a problem with confidence and with helplessness. But in spite of these issues, her fiance does love her and apparently so does one of the other suspects, to the point that his wife is jealous of her.

This episode was a rather average one for Perry Mason, but even average Perry Mason is good viewing because of the cast. There is one humorous thread I see going on here. In this episode, as in "The Case of the Drowning Duck", Perry has to take a trip to the desert community of Logan City. In both episodes, each time the cast of Perry Mason is visiting there, they frequently wipe their brow with a handkerchief, I guess to underscore that it is hot there, just in case you forget that this is the desert. A rather pedestrian touch made cute by the fact that Perry Mason is usually such a subtle show.

Young Christine White is Perry Mason's client in this episode. She gets to be that second hand because of her psychiatrist Barry Atwater who comes to Raymond Burr with an ethical dilemma. In a taped session White confesses to a murder by poison.

What does Atwater do. If he withholds evidence of a crime he could be arrested regardless of patient confidentiality. If he reports it and there wasn't a murder he could be sued. Those are the questions that would trouble Oliver Wendell Holmes let alone Perry Mason.

When he takes the case Burr finds himself accused of evidence tampering first by Ray Collins, second by William Talman. Now he has to find evidence and clear his name as well as White's.

He does find the murderer right at the very end and someone you'd least suspect. There were in fact any number of people who would like to have killed this particular victim who was Christine White's uncle.

I have a feeling that Perry Mason will take this murderer's case if that helps any in your guessing.

I laughed when the judge ordered the arrest of the woman for murder based solely on the testimony of a guy who just "perjured" himself. Too funny!

This show is the worst when it comes to true investigative and courtroom procedures...not to mention anything resembling law.

There are too many goofy events in this one. People throwing pill bottles with buckshot into a pond. Little kids finding them and handing them off to investigators. The defendant is a bonafide knucklehead. With her brunet hairstyle, she was the wife of William Shatner in that Twilight Zone episode with the Gremlin on the wing. There is truth serum used. Cyanide lying around. And more. It was just ridiculous plotting. But they needed to come up with an hour every week for most of a year.

This is more Trivia than Review. Two off-handed items. One, the papers that the creepy Uncle taunted poor Nadine with held a secret about her deceased father. Two, Perry makes a comment to Nadine in her cell. He asks he about being "A Bad Seed". Movie buffs will likely know that William Hopper played Rhoda's father in the feature film "The Bad Seed" released two years earlier. Fun trivia fact.