Jack Culross is an artist who decides that the best way to increase the value of his work is to fake his own death. His art dealer and partner in the scheme, Austin Durrant, arranges to buy what bits and pieces are left in his studio from the man's 'widow', Edna, as she is moving to her home in Panama. When, several months later, she hears about her husbands paintings up for sale, she returns with her brother to find a painting hanging in Durrant's gallery of what was, at the time of her husband's death, an incomplete painting. She assumes fraud and consults Perry Mason. Perry and David Gideon check out the painting, which has been sold, with a thermocouple which confirms it was finished after Jack's suicide. The case becomes one of murder when Jack Culross' body is discovered after he has called Edna and the fake suicide is revealed. Edna is charged with murder and Perry defends her.
—garykmcd