- Encyclopedia saleswoman Gwynn Elston has moved in with her friend, Nell Grimes, and her new husband Felton. Gwynn spots a picture in a customer's home and realizes Felton is a bigamist. When Felton is found dead, Gwynn is the prime suspect.
- Gwynn Elston, a door-to-door encyclopedia saleswoman, is staying at the home of her friend, Nell Grimes. While making a sale at another house, she discovers that Nell's husband, Felton Grimes, has another wife, who knows him as Frank Gillette. She lets it slip that she knows about this when Grimes makes a pass at her, and then goes to Perry because she thinks Grimes may have tried to poison her to keep her quiet. She then thinks she is being followed when she goes back to the home of Grimes' other wife. Though Gwynn starts to believe she may be overreacting, Perry learns that there really was strychnine in the drink Grimes had given her. When Grimes is found dead in the yard of Mrs. Gillette's neighbor, Gwynn is charged with his murder and Perry defends her. To solve the mystery, Perry looks into the mystery of Grimes' father, who died only two days earlier.—rbecker28
- An encyclopedia saleswoman finds out her friend's husband is also married to someone else. When she thinks this bigamist has tried to poison her, she goes to Perry for help. Soon, she'll need even more help when she's fingered for the man's murder.
*** SPOILER ALERT. This Synopsis reveals the entire plot, including the ending.
Newlywed Nell Grimes has asked her friend Gwynn Elston to stay at her home, because Nell's husband Felton Grimes is away on trips much of the time. On her job as a door-to-door saleswoman of a children's encyclopedia, Gwynn calls at a home in an upscale neighborhood and sees photos of Felton. She learns that in this house he's Frank Gillette, a husband and father who's away on trips more than half the time. Stunned, Gwynn can think of nothing to do except go into her sales pitch.
Back at the Grimes house, Felton finds Gwynn going through his desk. She says she was looking for a paper she lost, and soon they're arguing over such things as Gwynn's taste in drinks and Felton's habit of making passes at her. He tells her forcefully that she isn't going to tell Nell anything. Upset, Gwynn goes to the kitchen and throws out the drink Felton made for her. On a hunch, she wipes up some of the drink and takes it to Perry. He'll have Paul look into whether it was poisoned, and he tells Gwynn to act as if nothing has happened. She should even go back to the Gillette house to pick up the signed purchase forms for the encyclopedia she sold them. Perry's sure that if Felton is Frank, he won't be there to be identified.
Gwynn follows this advice and Perry's right. However, when Gwynn leaves, she sees a man near her car. To avoid him, she walks up the driveway of the Baxter estate next door, where she sees Felton/Frank's car. She runs to the house and rings the doorbell, but all that happens is that upstairs lights go out. She tries pounding on the door, and then the caretaker Corley Ketchum appears behind her and says that no one's home. Baxter is in Bakersfield. After hearing Gwynn's story, Ketchum goes to investigate, but the car is gone. Gwynn returns to her own car and is about to leave when she notices a man (whom we later learn is P.I. Carl Jasper) crouched behind the other side. He says he was just looking for some keys he'd lost earlier.
Gwynn is more confident the next day when she calls Perry, because she assumes the man she saw was one of Paul's men, there to protect her. However, Paul tells Perry that he posted no such man, and also that the drink really did contain strychnine. Gwynn is going to see Perry, but she realizes she has dropped the form that Frank had signed, so she goes back to the Baxter place to retrieve it. There she finds Frank's car - and his body.
Later, the police are at the murder scene, having been called by Baxter, who says he discovered the body that morning on his return from Bakersfield. He says that he'd never actually met his neighbor Frank. The investigators soon find the gun with which Frank was shot, registered to him. Paul shows up, and Lt. Andy Anderson is suspicious. He shows Paul a compact with the initials "G.E." and asks him if he knows who that could be. "General Electric?", ventures Paul.
In Perry's office, Paul is upset because he had followed Perry's request to pick up Gwynn's lost forms, and only afterward learned he was at a crime scene. Perry tells him it's OK and asks for a report. The victim really was Frank Gillette. He was just an ordinary working stiff until about a year ago, when he moved into a more expensive home and started a mysterious job that involved lots of "trips". A few months later, he married Nell as Felton Grimes, and apparently had no trouble supporting two families comfortably, even though all those business trips were shams. Also, it seems that Frank's father Gorman Gillette had been living in Pinehaven, near Bakersfield, until he died two days before Frank. Andy shows up to take Gwynn and Paul in for questioning.
In Pinehaven, Perry questions the undertaker by pretending that he thinks Gorman might be his long-lost uncle. He learns that the local doctor found Gorman in his shack, dead from pneumonia. While "viewing the remains", Perry takes Gorman's fingerprints with Della's lipstick and has her send them off to Paul. In the shack, Perry finds that Gorman's reading was confined to tales of the West, except for one carefully dog-eared issue of Suburban Landscaping magazine. Paul calls to say that Gwynn has been charged with murder, Also, Gorman had once been imprisoned for armed robbery. His accomplice, a man named Halsey, got away, and was still being sought by the police on a murder charge. Perry tells Paul to find a copy of the same issue of Suburban Landscaping and also to get a subpoena for Baxter.
Baxter bursts into Perry's office, threatening to sue over the subpoena. After avoiding several of Perry's attempts to get his fingerprints, Baxter leaves them on Perry's desk while leaning on it, then storms out. Paul says the police have stopped looking for the mysterious man Gwynn reported, which tells Perry they've found him and that Burger plans to use him against Gwynn. Perry points out Baxter's fingerprints and says "There's our case right there."
In court, Andy testifies that blood of Frank's type was found on the compact and on footprints matching Gwynn's shoe size. The pattern of the footprints indicated a struggle. Carl Jasper testifies that he had been hired by Frank to watch the Gillette house and Gwynn, but he blew the job by being seen. He says that Frank appeared right after Gwynn left and told him that he'd fix her himself. Glad to be out of that kind of case, Jasper headed back to his car, parked some distance away. Leaving, he had to drive back the way he came, and he saw Gwynn coming back toward the Gillette and Baxter homes in her car. Gwynn tells Perry that she simply drove past the area one more time, and saw nothing except headlights (presumably of Jasper's car). Paul says that Baxter's fingerprints don't match the fugitive Halsey's.
Perry calls Baxter to the stand and shows him a photo from the Suburban Landscaping issue. It shows Baxter and Ketchum. Perry presses him on why this would matter to Gorman and Frank Gillette, and Baxter finally admits that he and Ketchum are brothers whose real name is Halsey. After Ketchum got in trouble with the law, and Baxter started becoming richer and therefore more prominent, they decided that Ketchum needed a low profile. Therefore, he would just be known as the caretaker. Gorman saw the photo and realized the deception, but didn't make any demands. However, he also told his son, who started blackmailing the Halseys at a moderate but constant rate. On the night he was murdered, Frank met with the Halsey's at their house and demanded a quarter-million lump sum payment. He wanted to leave the country, in part to avoid the poisoning charge. Ketchum testifies that they agreed to give Frank as much money as was possible on such short notice, and Frank left satisfied. Later, as the brothers were discussing their situation, they heard a gunshot and from the window saw Frank's body. They each left, Baxter to Bakersfield so he could return from there the next morning, and Ketchum to a place downtown. Ketchum says that he heard what sounded like a woman in heels running away.
Perry puts Gwynn on the stand and asks her who could have had access to her compact in order to plant it at the crime scene. She's speechless, so Perry asks her if she knows Nell's shoe size, which Gwynn admits is the same as her own. He asks her if on her return home that night if she'd checked if Nell was really asleep in her room, as Nell had testified. Horrified, Gwynn begs Nell to tell them she didn't do it, but Nell breaks down in sobs.
Later, Paul and Perry explain that Nell must have suspected the bigamy at least a week earlier, and had invited Gwynn to live there in order to do some investigating for her. Perry shows her that someone had added the Gillette home to Gwynn's prospect list, thus explaining the "coincidence" of Gwynn going to that particular home in a city as huge as L.A. Nell followed Gwynn there, hid until Frank was about to leave, accused him of bigamy, fought with him, and finally shot him. "Poor Nell", says Gwynn about the woman who attempted to frame her for murder. "Poor world", replies Perry.
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