- A cold-hearted woman refuses to give her husband a divorce. His new invention gives him financial independence so his request for a divorce causes his wife to plan the destruction of the invention and his girlfriend but she is the victim.
- Cold-hearted Laura Randall dominates the people around her every way she can, from faking being an invalid to blackmail. Her husband Walter, who is about to sell his underwater-sounding invention, asks her for a divorce. Laura knows that Walter now loves her caretaker, Phyllis, so she plots to destroy both the invention and her rival with a time bomb at Walter's lab. Laura forces her brother-in-law Roger who handles her business affairs to build a timed bomb. He had forged a check for an investment in Bruce Sheridan's company that failed which Laura held over Roger. Laura has Phyllis deliver the package to the lab where the invention is stored after Laura takes the sleeping pill given her by Phyllis. Laura follows Phyllis to the lab where she knocks out Phyllis so she is killed in the explosion. Phyllis surviving the bombing decides to see Mason but when she returns home, she learns that Laura was killed after being drugged and dying due to gas from her heater and that she's Lt. Tragg's prime suspect. To save Phyllis, Perry will need not only his usual legal legerdemain and detective acumen, but also some skill at scientific experimentation.—arthurblock
- Laura Randall will stop at nothing to control those around her - until someone finally stops her. It seems that only Perry's client could have done the deed, until Perry proves otherwise - with science!
*** SPOILER ALERT *** This is a Synopsis as defined by IMDb. That means it's full of spoilers.
Walter Randall has just made a deal to sell his new invention, an underwater sounding device - pending field testing. He phones home with the good news, but it turns out that the woman at the other end of the line, who shares his happiness over this success, is not his wife but her caretaker, Phyllis Hudson. Laura Randall is the "wintry wife" of the title, having both a minor circulation problem (which she exploits to act as a fake invalid, not really fooling those close to her) and a cold heart. She rules as a tyrant over relatives, in-laws, anyone over whom she can get control through her wealth or by blackmail. When Walter returns with his good news, he asks Laura for a divorce, and Laura replies that he'll get one. Once he has left, she completes her thought: "over my dead body". She's quite aware of the love between her husband and Phyllis. Meanwhile, Walter arranges for Perry to handle the legal details of the sale.
Laura hatches a complex plot involving a time bomb (created by brother-in-law Roger Phillips, one of her blackmail victims) to be used to eliminate both Walter's invention and Phyllis. Laura follows Phyllis to Walter's lab and knocks her out with a heavy plank to the back of the head. However, Phyllis is saved from the lab explosion and, unable to find Walter, goes to Mason's office. Perry takes her back to the Randall house to pick up some personal belonging before going to stay at Della's place. When they arrive they encounter the police, who are investigating Laura's death in a fire. Lt. Tragg holds Phyllis for questioning.
Perry learns from Tragg and Deputy DA Chamberlin that Phyllis is being held for murder. It seems that Laura was under the effects of a sleeping pill that Phyllis gave her and therefore helpless when the fire broke out. The fire was caused by someone shutting on and off the gas to Phyllis's bedroom, causing it to fill the room with gas. Chamberlin has incontrovertible evidence that only Laura and Phyllis were in the house between the time this must have occurred and the discovery of the body by Bruce Sheridan, yet another member of Laura's coterie, and Bruce's girlfriend. (Note: It later turns out that Laura did take the sleeping pill and managed to stumble back home just in time to get to her bedroom, with an alibi for the bombing.)
As usual, Perry insists on turning the preliminary hearing into a trial. Unusually for a Mason episode, the judge actually explains that such hearings aren't supposed to be about weighing evidence, then grants Perry's motion to do exactly that. At a recess, Paul tells Perry about the apparently unimportant evidence, some metal shavings, he's found at the crime scene. Perry says this is what he hoped to find, and has Paul charter a helicopter.
When the trial reconvenes, Chamberlin calls Walter Randall as a hostile witness, and forces him to admit his romance with Phyllis and the motive it creates. Walter himself was at sea for the trials of his invention, with multiple witnesses to this fact. Perry now demonstrates how the gas could have been turned on and off from a great distance away (in this case, Paul in the distant helicopter), by a radio-controlled device attached to the gas line. The meager evidence that Paul found turned out to show that such a device had been in place, then removed before the police could find it. Perry attacks Walter, having shown how it was possible for him to kill his wife after all, but Randall vigorously denies this. Perry then calls Bruce Sheridan to clear up a few matters. Soon, Perry turns on Bruce, forcing him to admit a motive - Laura was blackmailing him too. Perry points out that while several people might have been able to install the remote control device in the Randall home, only Sheridan had the opportunity to remove it prior to the police investigation. Bruce confesses. (Given how many meanies actor Alan Hewitt played in Disney movies, this shouldn't have been a big surprise.)
Talking to the reunited Walter and Phyllis in his office, Perry reveals that he came up with the solution through a combination of the importance of electronic gizmos in the case, plus the fact that DDA Chamberlin had iron-clad evidence that no one beside his client had entered the house during the critical time. By process of elimination, that led him to suspect remote control.
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