Early in the fourth season of Murder, She Wrote is the episode Witness For the Defense. It’s a courtroom drama, which is rare for the series. The action takes place mostly outside of the courtroom, it’s true, but that also tends to be true of courtroom dramas. Interestingly, it takes place in Canada where the court system is pleasingly British.
Jessica, by the way, is the eponymous witness for the defense. She’s been called up to Canada to be a witness in the murder trial of a friend of hers. The scene opens with Jessica being shown into the law office of Oliver Quayle. She meets, however, not Mr. Quayle but his assistant, Barnaby Friar.
Barnaby is an affable, likeable fellow who, it turns out, is much of the reason that people will deal with Oliver Quayle at all. That plus his amazing record at winning murder trials. Which brings us to the subject of why Jessica is there: she was asked to come as a witness in the trial of the Crown vs. James Harlan. Barnaby suggests letting the great man do the explanation. This, by the way, is the great man:
If you can imagine it, his speech is even more pompous than he looks. He’s also very busy; his tailor is fitting him for a new suit while he’s on the telephone. (The call was about a friend who wanted to borrow his jet for a few weeks.)
Instead of telling Jessica what the trial is all about, he has her narrate the events of the fateful night that Jim’s wife died. Jessica, for once, complies instead of demanding answers. I suppose exposition is more important than Jessica’s principles.
It was about six months ago, and Jim was about to publish his second novel, and he had invited her up to look at the galleys…
As a side note, it’s curious how many writers ask Jessica to read their book, regardless of what genre they’re writing in. I suppose her having been a high school English teacher comes in handy, here. Why they all invite Jessica over rather than sending her the manuscript I don’t know; it seems like an inefficient use of time. The writers do need to get Jessica out of Cabot Cove somehow, though, and (I suppose) this is as good an excuse as any. Even so, I can’t help but wonder how Jessica is on such close terms with people all over the world as to read their manuscripts and give them advice on their life’s work. Her myriad of nieces is more plausible.
Jessica explains by saying that she had shown him encouragement on his first book and they had become close. This reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s comments on saying that life started on earth because aliens planted it here: it’s just kicking the can down the road. If memory serves, his analogy was that it’s no answer to where did the ghost in the cemetery come from to say that it came from a neighboring cemetery. She was asked to give him advice on his second book because she had given him advice on his first book doesn’t really answer anything.
Still, I can be sympathetic to the problem of how you call your amateur detective in. It’s not easy, and the writers of Murder, She Wrote had to do it two hundred and sixty four times. With that many times of calling Jessica in, they can’t all be winners.
Here’s Jim worriedly asking what she thought of the book:
(If you recognize him, that’s because Christopher Allport, the actor playing Jim, had previously played Donald Granger in If The Frame Fits.)
After Jessica talks about how wonderful his book is, a car pulls up outside. Jim goes to the window and announces that Patricia is back. Patricia is his wife, and in the picture below is the one in blue. As she and a friend named Monica Blane walk out of her expensive sports car…
They look over at the gardener, who winks at Patricia.
She nods her head in acknowledgement, then goes into the house. How Jessica knew either about the winking or the nodding I have no idea, because Jessica was toward the back of the room with a curtain on the window and couldn’t possibly have seen either. (She’s in the same place in the room you can see in the picture of Jim asking her how she liked the book.)
There’s some schmoozing and Jim and Patricia seem genuinely affectionate. There are a few important points, though:
- Monica has to leave on a 7:40pm flight
- Patricia has a lovely brooch that is a gift from her husband on their first anniversary and
- a family heirloom that belonged to his grandmother.
- Patricia booked an appointment to have her hair done at 6pm so she asks Jim to run Monica to the airport for her.
- Jim agrees and talks about stopping for some drinks with Monica on the way to the airport in a highly suggestive manner.
When this clue session is over, Jessica then skips the narration to that evening, when they gathered for dinner at precisely 8:30pm in the Harlan town house in the city. Jim’s mother, Judith, will let nothing interfere with her routine.
After a bit of chatter in which Judith seems to imply that Jim’s book isn’t any good, a servant comes in and tells her that there was a fire at the country house.
Jessica then returns to the present and tells Mr. Quayle that Jim was devastated when he learned that Patricia died in that fire. Mr. Quayle then goes on about what a great witness Jessica will make, with her national standing and Cabot Cove Maine down-home background. He asks if she has a straw hat with violets in it and says that Barnaby will get her one to complete the look. Jessica indignantly protests that she will not play a country bumpkin for him or for anyone else when he’s interrupted by a phone call from his ex-wife.
I find it difficult to take Jessica’s indignation seriously. She is not so scrupulously honest that she never lies during her investigations. In Night of the Headless Horseman she pretended to be Dorian Beecher’s mother. Mr. Quayle isn’t even asking her to lie—he’s just asking her to dress in a way that will be particularly sympathetic to the jury. This isn’t the sort of thing that anyone should be indignant about, let alone a woman who will lie and wear costumes during an investigation and who is never bothered adultery to say nothing of fornication.
As Quayle’s phone call with his ex-wife—which, oddly, contained an amount of affection which might have been excessive had it been his wife—concludes, Barnaby reminds him of his next appointment and he leaves a flustered Jessica without answers. The next scene goes to the Harlans’ town house at night where Jessica asks Jim why he’s been charged for murder. He explains that the authorities believe that the fire was arson. His mother then comes down and he goes up to bed. During the conversation with Judith, it comes out that Judith thought that Patricia was a bad woman. “Jim was such a serious, studious boy, that he really had no experience with that sort of person.”
In the next scene we go to the courtroom where the prosecutor for the crown (Miss Pirage, pronounced “peer-ahj”) asks a witness what he concluded after his laboratory investigations. I can’t tell what her accent is supposed to be; she pronounces laboratory “lah-bohr-a-tory” as the posh English do, but this is in Canada. Quebec, even, which makes it strange that the trial is conducted in English, and even more strange that the judge, learned counsel, etc all have quasi-English accents rather than French accents. C’est la vie, I suppose.
In his laboratory investigations, he discovered that a gas line in the hot water heater in the basement was disconnected, allowing gas to escape. A gas jet in the stove had been left on upstairs, causing a gas explosion. I’d have thought that all this would have been easier to determine in a crime-scene investigation than a laboratory investigation, but perhaps in Canada they have better lighting in their laboratories and no flashlights. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Canada. I don’t remember what it’s like up there.
Mr. Quayle cross-examines in a pompous style that’s pretty funny. He begins by clarifying whether it’s Miss Pirage or Mrs. Pirage, and explains that he prefers to be precise and would hate to begin by giving her a husband she does not have. She quips back that if she decides she wants a husband, she’ll remember his generous offer. The actors pull it off, and it does come across as funny.
Mr Quayle then begins his cross-examination; he very theatrically elicits from the witness that all he found was an open valve on the stove which is the limits of his knowledge, and is merely surmising that it was left on and was the cause of the fire.
The next witness is the gardener, who testifies that on the day she died he heard Patricia and Jim yelling at each other. She wanted a divorce. Jim’s answer to this request was, “before I give you a divorce I’ll see you dead.”
Mr. Quayle’s cross-examination is basic character assassination; he brings up that the gardener passed a course in auto-repair from a penitentiary institution, and was fired for theft. He concludes, from the way that the gardener shouts that it was a lie, that he was going to ask if the (the gardener) bears the Harlan family ill-will, but the question is no longer necessary.
The next witness is a doctor who testifies that autopsy was very difficult because the fire had almost entirely destroyed the remains. They could only identify the body from the jewelry on it—a engagement ring and engraved wedding band. She does elicit from him—he’s prone to tangents—that what was left of the victim’s skull had a large fracture in the frontal lobe, and there’s no question about it, the victim died from the blow to the head.
We do not see Quayle’s cross-examination. Instead we go back to Mr. Quayle’s office where Jessica, Judith and Jim are sitting on a couch while Barnaby is pouring them tea and Mr. Quayle is asking Barnaby for a list of doctors they’ve used in the past. What they’re all doing here, I’ve no idea; I can’t see why Jessica and the Harlans would go back to their barrister’s office. Anyway, Jessica goes into Mr Quayle’s office as he’s doing research and informs him that it seems to her that Patricia was dead before the fire started. Mr. Quayle asks if she has some medical expertise and she replies that it’s just a matter of common sense—it must have taken some time for the gas to have gotten up to the top floor and if she were alive she would have smelled it.
Quayle replies that it’s up to the crown to prove that she didn’t die in the fire. Jessica answers that it’s not a matter of proof, it’s a matter of logic. I think this is supposed to come off as dishonest Quayle vs. honest Jessica, but she just seems a bit thick-headed to not realize that in a murder defense, ambiguity is on the side of justice if the defendant is innocent.
Quayle is interrupted by his secretary, who tells him that his ex is on the line. This turns out to be another ex-wife, who he addresses in terms equally affectionate as he addressed his previous ex-wife.
Jessica walks back into the waiting room and talks to Jim. She tells him that if Patricia did die prior to the fire, he may need to establish his whereabouts. He reminds her that he took Monica to the airport. How that’s supposed to help, I’m not sure. Her flight was at 7:40pm and even back then you didn’t drop someone off at 7:39 for a 7:40 flight. Unless these things are far apart he would have had plenty of time to get back, murder Patricia, and arrive on time for dinner. Jessica decides that it’s very important to track Monica Blane down. She goes and asks Mr. Quayle if he’s tried to track her down and he tells her that he has decided that her (Jessica’s) testimony will not be necessary, Barnaby will reimburse her for expenses, and he wishes her a pleasant trip back to Maine. (Judith slipped into Quayle’s office before this; it seems possible that she might have had something to do with it.)
Jessica and Jim then go for a walk past a Mounty to talk over the case.
Jessica then asks Jim about the gardener’s testimony. He says that Patricia had been going through a lot of money and refused to account for it. They both got upset and said things that they didn’t mean, but he didn’t threaten Patricia and never would have hurt her. Jessica says that the question is, then, why the gardener was lying.
Jessica then takes a cab to the gardener’s shack where he’s working on a vintage car.
Jessica pretends to be a country bumpkin who is hoping to get a story into the Cabot Cove Gazette. I suppose she won’t pretend to be a country bumpkin for Mr. Quayle or anyone else; she’ll only pretend to be a country bumpkin for herself. I believe that in modern parlance that sort of selfishness is supposed to be independence, or integrity, or something. Be that as it may, it’s things like this that make it very hard to take Jessica’s indignation seriously. And be that as it may, she does manage to pump the gardener for a little information. It turns out that he saw Patricia lying on the floor (presumably dead) through a window before the fire. He didn’t say anything about it because he doesn’t get involved with the police and he would deny what he told her if anyone else asked about it.
For some reason we now get back to the cross-examination of the crown’s medical witness by Mr. Quayle. He asks whether the skull could have been crushed by a falling beam during the fire, or if in fact it is not most probable that the skull was crushed in that fashion. The medical examiner admits that it is possible.
The crown next calls Nathan Klebber, whoever he is.
He turns out to be the owner and operator of the Blue Sky Motel on Aviation Boulevard near “the airport”. I find that last little imprecision amusing because it makes sense for television but is out of character. If the learned counsel is going to the trouble of specifying the Blue Sky Motel and the street it’s on, it would be natural to specify its distance from the airport and also which airport. I haven’t checked but it seems likely that there is more than one airport in Canada. That’s the sort of detail that screenwriters often leave out, in part because it’s (almost) certain you won’t get sued by a real person or business if you don’t actually name them. It’s a little odd not to make up a fake name for it, though.
The learned counsel for the crown asks if on May 14 “of last year” whether he rented a room to an attractive blond woman in her early thirties. He replies that he did; he punched “the card” at 6:53pm. He then leans forward and in his sleasiest voice says that with everyone travelling he sometimes rents by the hour. She gave the name “Monica Blane” on the registration card. She came into the office alone but there was a man with him, and he saw the man. He then identifies Jim Harlan.
This is a strange turn of events for several reasons. The one that stands out most in my mind is that the sleazy motel owner makes a remarkably confident identification for a man he saw out his office window and in a car, somewhere around a year ago.
Actually, this time frame is itself a problem because when Jessica gives her narration to Mr. Quayle in the beginning of the episode she says that the events she narrated took place “about six months ago”. Six months from May 14th would be in November of the same year. Even if one stretched eight months to be “about six months” that would only place the episode in early January. As I’ve previously noted, I’m not an expert on Canada. That said, it is my distinct impression that Canada, in January, tends to be cold. It’s not really the sort of place that a person would work on a car outdoors with rolled up sleeves. Moreover, the exterior scenes we’ve seen so far all showed the lush greens of late spring or summer. Jessica’s flashbacks, likewise, showed lush greens—the gardener was outside trimming bushes—so I don’t see any way for this trial to be less than about a year ago, despite Jessica’s putting it only six months ago.
So how valuable is the identification provided by one of the sleaziest witnesses ever to sit in the witness box of a man he saw a year ago, through his office window, sitting inside a car? Moreover, when there was absolutely no reason for the motel owner to have attached any significance to the event?
To be fair on that last point, it’s likely that the police, during their investigation, would have questioned him days or weeks after the event. Presumably he would have identified Jim from a photograph then and his testimony in court a year later is merely referencing his earlier identification. They don’t show that, but it’s more reasonable and plausible with what they’ve said. Even so, though, that identification would have been under the really terrible circumstances I described above. I also have to question why a motel owner who rents by the hour would even look at his guests enough to notice them. When you deal with the general public they tend to become a blur. Perhaps Jim stood out because Monica was so pretty and he was curious who was with her? That’s not absurd, but it would have been nice to establish.
However that goes, Mr. Quayle does not tear the motel owner to shreds but instead asks to cross-examine at a later time, which the judge grants. The crown then calls Jessica Fletcher to the stand!
Some very dramatic music plays. Mr. Quayle looks surprised then looks at Jessica as if she’s betrayed Jim. She looks around as if he might have been looking at someone else.
Or perhaps she was just looking away in shame.
The sum total of what she’s asked is all she would have testified had Mr. Quayle called her—that Jim and Monica left the country house just before six o’clock and dropped her off at the Harlan town house just after 6:30. He then left with Monica and the next she saw Jim was at 8:30 for dinner. The learned counsel for the crown dramatically asks if Jessica has no knowledge of Jim’s whereabouts between 6:30 and 8:30 and Jessica confusedly says that’s correct.
The learned counsel for the crown then states that these two hours were plenty of time for the defendant to go back to the country house, murder his wife, then get back to the city for dinner.
Perhaps so, but if it takes over half an hour to get from the country house to the city house, as the learned counsel for the crown just established, what on earth is her theory of the crime given that she was the one who called the witness to testify Jim was checking into a by-the-hour motel with Monica Blane at 6:53pm? I suppose that the airport could be right next to the country house, but unless that’s the case and we’re further to suppose that Jim and Monica didn’t actually do anything in the hotel room they rented, the learned counsel for the crown just established Jim’s alibi.
Instead of thanking the Queen’s Counsel for proving the innocence of his client, Mr. Quayle immediately cross-examines Jessica and engages in one of the most entertaining courtroom character-assassinations I’ve ever seen.
He begins by asking if she has ever used the alias “J.B. Fletcher,” and when she says that it’s the name she uses on her books, he asks, “So, you admit that you are a writer?” When she admits this, he asks, “And it was in the guise of a writer that you wheedled your way into the confidence of the Harlan family?” A moment later he asks, “Do you deny that the plot for your next book was stolen from an unpublished manuscript by James Harlan?” Quayle replies to her denial that it’s a matter that they will leave to the civil courts to decide. He then asks if she remembers being committed to the State of Maine Institute for the Criminally Insane in 1985.
The learned counsel for the crown objects and the judge sustains the objection, but Jessica answers anyway—she wasn’t committed, she entered the institution voluntarily. Mr Quayle asks if it was under the care of Dr. Sidney Buckman, a specialist in the field of criminal psychosis (whatever that is). Jessica says yes, she was researching a book. Mr. Quayle then commends it as a perfect subterfuge. Jessica replies that the book was called Sanitarium of Death and was dedicated to Dr. Buckman. Mr. Quayle surmises out of gratitude for the care which she received.
He proceeds to ask whether Jessica’s neice, Victoria Griffin, was arrested for murder last year. Jessica says yes. (This is referring to the third season episode Corn Beef & Carnage.) He also asks whether another neice, Tracy Magill, was also arrested for murder. (This is referring to the second season episode Dead Heat.) And that her nephew, Grady Fletcher, was arrested for murder not once but twice? (I forget which episodes this would be and there are too many with Grady to spend the time refreshing my memory of the plots of them all, unfortunately.) He concludes that “it seems that one of New England’s most respected families is a breeding ground for homicidal lunatics!”
Part of what I love about this character assassination is how completely pointless it is. Quayle had no interest in discrediting Jessica’s testimony—she gave Jim an alibi up to 6:30pm and placed him at the townhouse at 8:30pm, which was better than he was doing without her. Moreover, this testimony was in no way different than what he had previously said was a small but vital role for her to play in getting Jim off of the charge. In any event, it’s not like the jury is going to not believe Jessica about being dropped off at the townhouse at 6:30pm because she comes from a family that’s frequently arrested for murder. About the only possible reason that Mr. Quayle had for performing this pointless character assassination was to keep in practice.
It was a lot of fun to see an episode of Murder, She Wrote that actually acknowledges previous episodes, though. Further, the actor playing Mr. Quayle (Patrick McGoohan), plays him very over-the-top. It’s just delightful.
Quayle says that he has no further questions and Jessica, bewildered and appalled, gets up. The learned counsel for the crown buries her head in her hand as if something bad just happened for her case.
As I noted, I think that something bad did just happen for her case, but it was what the last two witnesses which she called testified to. Quayle did her a favor in discrediting Jessica, if indeed we are to assume that he succeeded in that. No one seems to notice this, however, so we move to the next scene in some sort of cafeteria, where Jessica, sits down with the Queen’s Counsel at her invitation.
The QC condoles with her, saying that it feels like being mugged. Jessica asks whether she really believes that Jim Harlan murdered his wife, and Miss Pirage (the QC) says that she intends to prove that Jim Harlan conspired with Monica Blane to kill Patricia.
Next we see Jessica and Jim driving in a car. Jessica asks Jim for the truth, and he agrees to tell her. He and Patricia tried to keep up appearances but their marriage was sinking fast. Patricia went through money like Jessica wouldn’t believe. Even on the day she died she took out twenty thousand dollars in cash. (It was never found.)
Jessica asks about Monica Blane and the motel. Jim admits that it’s true. He left at 8pm. Monica took a taxi to get to her flight. Given that her flight was at 7:40pm, that taxi must have driven awful fast for her to make it on time. Jim went straight back to the town house to it make it there for dinner. Jim says that he’s embarrassed by it, but Jessica points out that at least Monica Blane could give Jim an alibi. If she could be found.
That evening while Jessica is getting ready for bed, Judith knocks on her hotel room door and asks if she can come in. She apologizes for the vicious way that Mr. Quayle attacked her. After some conversation, it comes up that Judith found out that Patricia had spent a year in jail for embezzling funds from a previous employer and that she had been nothing more than a common Las Vegas showgirl when Jim had met her. Jessica surmises that Monica Blane was not an old schoolmate of Patricia’s but in fact had met her in prison, and was blackmailing Patricia. Judith had paid Monica a great deal of money to disappear through an intermediary—a private investigator.
The next day Jessica goes to Mr. Quayle’s office and talks to Barnaby where she gets him to show her a copy of the police report. It’s got a picture of the jewelry that Patricia’s body was identified with. Jessica asks where the diamond brooch is that Monica was wearing, and Barnaby tells her that there was no mention of a brooch.
Just then a private investigator walks in and announces that he’s there to see Mr. Quayle with information about the location of Monica Blane in exchange for “five large”.
Since Mr. Quayle isn’t around, Jessica goes to meet the private investigator instead. Then Mr. Quayle shows up. It doesn’t matter much because either way they get the location of Monica Blane.
The next day in court, before Mr. Quayle can call Monica Blane the Queen’s Counsel does instead. Monica testifies that she did spend time with Jim at the motel, but then she took a taxi to the airport because she had a 7:40 flight. When asked if it’s true that Jim did not drive her, she said that no, he said that he had to go to the country house to straighten some things out with his wife. Jim stands up and shouts that this is a lie and Mr. Quayle tells him to sit down.
At this point I don’t think that the timing works out no matter who you believe. The motel owner testifies that they booked the room at 6:53pm. Even back in 1987, arriving 47 minutes before an international flight was cutting it close. But she didn’t teleport to the airport, she spent time with Jim and then called a cab. Given the time it would take to call a cab, for a cab to arrive, then to drive Monica to the airport, it’s not very plausible that she spent any time with Jim and still made her flight.
More relevantly to the case, if we assume that the couple only spent ten minutes together… coupling, then Jim has an alibi until 7:03pm. Since it takes well over half an hour to get from the country house to the town house, where Jessica put him at 8:30, this gives him less than an hour to go from the motel by the airport to the country house to kill his wife and arrange the gas. I suppose that this depends on where the airport is, but my impression was that the town house was on the way to the airport, which would make the timing extremely close and pretty implausible. Outright impossible if the couple was together for twenty minutes and the airport was at least ten minutes further away from the country house than the town house was.
No one bothers to think about this, though. The next scene is at Mr. Quayle’s office, where Jessica and the Harlans are seated, talking. Jessica offers the suggestion that if Monica was blackmailing Patricia, perhaps she was trying to incriminate Jim in order to distract from her own crimes. This possibility really should have occurred to Jessica when she was spending so much effort to try to locate Monica to help Jim.
Mr Quayle arrives, yells at Jessica, then demands the Harlans come with him into his office. Mr. Quayle’s secretary comes in looking for an earing, which Jessica finds for her. She remarks that it’s not worth much but has a lot of sentimental value to her. Jessica then realizes who murdered Patricia.
The problem is how to prove it. Jessica talks to Barnaby and explains her idea. The gardener had told her that he went back to the house long after everyone had left. Perhaps he killed Patricia and stole the brooch. It would be stupid to sell the brooch so soon after the death, so if he took it he probably still has it hidden somewhere. Barnaby interrupts Mr. Quayle’s conference with the Harlans to propose this idea (Jessica thought Mr. Quayle would be more receptive if it came from Barnaby), and Mr. Quayle thinks he may be on to something. He instructs Barnaby to telephone a judge to get a search warrant. I guess in Canada private citizens can get search warrants? What a strange country.
Anyway, the next thing we see is a shadowy figure in a fancy car driving up to the gardener’s shack (where Jessica had interviewed him).
Oddly, for Murder, She Wrote, they didn’t disguise the figure very well, and in fact in the very next scene they show us that it’s Judith, wearing sunglasses and gloves but also distinctive jewelry and with her unusual hair on full display.
This strikes me as being about a 3% disguise. I suppose that there was no real point in trying to hold out the suspense of who the murderer was since the options were:
- Jim
- Judith
- Monica Blane
- The Gardener
Option 1 isn’t impossible, but it’s highly unlikely since Jim is a friend of Jessica’s and also a writer. I don’t think that they’re ever the murderer. Also, I can’t remember Murder, She Wrote ever pulling a bluff by having Jessica working to clear the murderer the whole episode while the dumb police officer turned out to be right.
Option 3 would be very difficult to believe, even given the sloppy way that this episode plays with time. Jim alibis Monica until some time after 7pm and at a motel near the airport. Wherever exactly the airport is, it’s clearly not in walking distance of the country house, so Monica would have had to take a cab or rent a car to get there, both of which would have been idiotic. Plus, Patricia was Monica’s cash cow. The blackmailer doesn’t kill the victim for the same reason that children are told the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Option 4 is unlikely, too, since the gardener had no motive to kill Patricia and also didn’t use the time-delay given by the gas leak to try to establish an alibi for himself. It’s not outright impossible. If Jessica was wrong about the blackmail, the gardener could have seen the twenty thousand dollars in cash and tried to steal it, killing Patricia in the process. The only problem, there, is that he would have had no way to know that anyone was searching for the brooch so he couldn’t be caught moving it to a better hiding place and we could hardly expect him to sneak into his own shack to plant the brooch on himself to throw suspicion onto himself.
That just leaves Judith. Since we don’t have any options, I guess that there was no point in pretending that we did.
As a small point, I wonder how Judith knew or expected that the gardener would be away from his shack. It would be very awkward for him to have found her there. She does call to him several times to make sure he’s not there, but I can’t imagine what she would have done had he been there.
Be that as it may, Judith is caught planting the brooch…
…by Jessica and the Queen’s Counsel, Miss Pirage. Normally, I’d say that this was a strange choice for an authority figure since prosecutors never go on searches for evidence because if anything happens during the search, they will be unable to prosecute the case because they are now a witness in the case. Who else could do it, though? There is no police detective in the case and it’s too late to bring one in. Jim wouldn’t be a great choice and Mr. Quayle or Barnaby would be worse choices. The gardener would technically be a possibility, but I know I wouldn’t want to rely on his testimony. It’s kind of curious that he’s not there, though, since without his permission Jessica and Miss Pirage are trespassing. Perhaps that’s not illegal in Canada?
Judith asks Jessica how she knew, and Jessica says that she had to ask herself who would take an antique brooch and leave a five karat diamond. The answer is someone to whom it was a family heirloom. Judith says that her mother was very fond of it, and it was a gift from her father.
Judith decides to confess to everything. Patricia’s appointment was not with her hairdresser (what a shock!) but with Judith. She was going to confront Patricia with everything that the private investigator had found out about her background. She offered Patricia a lot of money to quietly divorce Jim, without scandal. Patricia was not only greedy but abusive; she hit Judith. Judith grabbed whatever was nearby—the poker in the fireplace—and struck her down. She’s the one who disconnected the gas. She calculated that she had enough time to get to the town house before the fire consumed Patricia’s body. She couldn’t bear to see her mother’s brooch destroyed so she removed it from the body.
I find it curious that the brooch was the only thing of sentimental value in the entire country house. It was fortunate, I guess, that all of Judith’s sentimental attachments were stored in the town house.
Miss Pirage leads Judith away as if she has some sort of authority to arrest her, and before leaving the shack Judith turns to Jessica and says, “I hope you realize that I never would have let Jim be convicted for something I had done.” Jessica nods.
The closing scene is of Jessica and Barnaby talking. Barnaby says that their ploy worked, so I guess he was in on it. Jessica replies that she hopes Mr. Quayle appreciates what Barnaby did for him, and Barnaby shows off his new title.
Jessica comments that it has a “good, solid sound.” Mr Quayle walks in and Jessica says goodbye to him. He corrects her that it’s not goodbye, but au revoir. He’ll see her again a few months for the trial. He’s going to defend Judith. “Even the guilty deserve their day in court. I’m going to get her off. I always get them off.” Jessica says that it’s a trial she would rather skip, and Mr. Quayle says that she can’t. He’s going to call her as a witness.
The episode ends on Jessica’s look of horror.
There are a few things which are not small points that this episode leaves unanswered. Why did the gardener testify that Patricia asked for a divorce and that Jim replied that he’d kill her first? I suppose we’re meant to assume that he lied about it to try to hurt the Harlans in revenge for having been fired, but this would have been nice to establish. It’s also a somewhat strange motive. Again, we have to assume that this is based on testimony he gave the police in the days or weeks after the crime; without knowing that the fire was started intentionally, it would be a somewhat odd lie to tell. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth about having seen Patricia’s body before the fire, perhaps he thought that Jim really did do it and was trying to help the police get him. Which would be out of character, since he doesn’t like to talk to the police. Come to think of it, why did he cooperate with the police enough to lie about the fight but not enough to tell the truth about having seen the body on the floor prior to the fire? I don’t see any way that this makes sense.
Another question that is left unanswered is what actually happened with Jim Harlan and Monica Blane? I don’t see any way that she actually made her 7:40pm flight, but if she didn’t, what happened to her? Why did she try to incriminate Jim in the death of Patricia if she wasn’t involved? It doesn’t help her to make an enemy of Mr. Quayle (even if she doesn’t know him by reputation). Having just testified that they spent time together then she took a cab to the airport would have been her safest bet.
Another weird point is how on earth the two ended up getting a room together. They were, so far as we can tell, barely in each other’s company prior to driving Jessica to the town house and in Jessica’s company from then until about twenty minutes before they got a motel room next to the airport. I realize that some people move quickly but this rivals how fast Pepe le Pew falls in love. Perhaps Monica Blane, with her criminal background, might be this impulsive. Jim Harlan, the studious and sensitive soul, would hardly be likely to jump into bed with Monica twenty minutes into what seems to be his first private conversation with her. Especially since he wanted his marriage to work out.
Another question that’s completely unanswered is what existed between Patricia and the gardener? If Monica Blane was blackmailing Patricia and Patricia was paying, that would mean that Patricia wanted to stay in her marriage. Why would she cheat with the gardener if she wanted to remain married to Jim? Was she even cheating with the gardener? The only real evidence we have is the gardener winking at her and her nodding back—all of which happened in Jessica’s retelling and which Jessica couldn’t have known.
Also, on the assumption that Patricia was paying Monica blackmail money, why was she? The things that Judith’s private investigator found out about were that Patricia had spent a year in prison for embezzling money and that she was a las vegas showgirl when Jim met her. Presumably Jim already knew she was a showgirl when he met her, so what harm was there in her past coming out. It would be embarrassing to have served prison time for a crime, but why would she wreck her marriage over keeping this secret?
These questions aside, I was really shocked when the completely unidentifiable corpse turned out to be who it was assumed to be on the basis of jewelry and not the person who has been missing ever since then. I had assumed that the corpse was actually that of Monica Blane until she was located. That the mystery was not so complicated was a kind of twist, but not the good kind. Nothing was made of it; none of the characters were misled by it. Nothing was covered up by it. It almost seems like it was just an accident that this was possible until it wasn’t anymore.
The unwritten rule of mysteries is that it only counts as a twist if the story turns out to be more clever than it seems.
Overall, this is a very curious episode. As a mystery, it isn’t very good. It’s overly simple. Absent Jessica’s interference, the learned counsel for the crown had probably proved Jim’s innocence herself. Failing that, the murderer would have revealed herself had the person Jessica was trying to save been convicted. Most of the ends were loose ends; very little was made to fit. On the other hand, as an episode of a TV show, it was extremely entertaining. The courtroom scenes were enjoyable, especially Oliver Quayle’s over-the-top pomposity. It was especially fun to see a nod toward the ridiculousness of all of the episodes when put together. The supporting characters were also fun, except for Judith who was kind of grating but she turned out to be the murderer so that was OK.
All things considered, Witness For the Defense is a good lesson in how strong characters can carry a weak story. It’s better to have strong characters in a strong story, of course, but strong characters are, clearly, worth an awful lot.
Chris Lansdown 
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