Plot

Ted Balfour is convicted of vehicular manslaughter and given a suspended sentence through a plea bargain. When the police discover the victim actually died of a gunshot wound to the head, Ted is charged with first-degree murder.

When Lawrence Balfour thinks his wife is having an affair, he follows her to a remote cabin. When she leaves, he attempts to confront her lover but in the darkness, his gun goes off and the man falls to the ground. In a panic he returns homes and calls the family's fixer, Steven Boles, who collects the body and makes it look like a road accident. The next day, Lawrence Balfour's nephew Ted is arrested and eventually convicted of manslaughter. Ted has no recollection whatsoever of the night in question when a man was run over with his car and accepted a plea bargain. Perry Mason is hired by the patriarch of the Balfour family, the elderly Addison Balfour, to find a way to have that conviction overturned. After Perry makes it clear he will not cooperate with Boles after Boles tells Perry the true facts, Perry is discharged by the family. When the police realize that the victim wasn't run over but was in fact shot, Ted is charged with murder and decides he still wants Perry to represent him.—garykmcd

Lawrence Balfour (Bruce Bennett) is on a train with his wife Harriet (Patricia Medina). He's on the first leg of a trip to rough terrain in Mexico for some amateur archeology - she's only accompanying him as far as nearby Colgrove. As soon as she's left the station in a cab, he gets off the train and drives after her in a car apparently left for him. She goes to the Sleepy Hollow cabins, and entering #8 she calls out "darling" to someone on the other side of the door. Lawrence arrives and checks on a car parked nearby. It's been rented by George Egan (Teddy Martin). Later, Harriet leaves for home and Lawrence enters, gun in hand, calling out to Egan in the darkness. He's blinded by a flashlight and has a chair swung at him. He fires and the assailant drops to the floor, unmoving. Lawrence drives home, where he phones Steven Boles (Douglas Kennedy), the Balfour empire's trouble-shooter. He tells Boles what happened, and Boles tells him the family's private plane will be waiting to take him to Tucson, where he can reboard the train and act as if he never left it.

Later, Boles has retrieved the body, which he dumps on the road and backs over with the big convertible he's driving. As he's ready to leave, Fred Haley (Woodrow Chambliss) drives up and sees what has happened. He tells the police what he saw, including the car's license plate number. When questioned by the police, the owner, young Ted Balfour (Tyler MacDuff), says he was drinking at a party the previous night, which he never does, and as a result can't remember anything of that night. The police take him in. Later, Boles visits Fred at his somewhat run-down resort at a small lake. He says that making improvements is slow work when there's not enough money. Boles says the Balfours will lend him $25,000, provided he's not so positive about what he saw when testifying. Haley agrees, and at Ted's manslaughter trial acts rather confused about the license number, resulting in a hung jury. Deputy D.A. Roger Faris (Guy Rennie), faced with Fred's unreliability, makes a plea bargain with Ted, who's convicted of involuntary manslaughter with a suspended sentence. Burger is unhappy when he learns of this, and tells Faris to get a court order to exhume the body.

Old family patriarch Addison Balfour (Richard Hale) is stuck in his sickbed, but he's unsatisfied with Ted's compromise sentence. He calls in Perry, asking him to try to get it entirely overturned. Ted says what he really wants is to learn the truth - did he really kill a man? After the others leave, Addison tells Perry that his son Lawrence, with his archeology and untrustworthy wife, doesn't have what it takes to run the family businesses. That leaves his grandson Ted, who's father died in the war. He has potential, but Addison wants Perry to teach him how to fight. He also warns Perry that Ted had loved Harriet at one time and might be carrying a torch for her.

The autopsy revealed the bullet that really killed Egan, so Ted is charged with murder. At a habeas corpus hearing, Perry argues that since Ted was already tried for causing Egan's death, the murder charge amounts to double jeopardy. He presents precedent that if the state mistakenly enters a lesser charge, jeopardy attaches immediately and they can't retry on a stronger charge. Judge Cadwell (Morris Ankrum) is unsure this fits the facts in the case, so he wants a higher court to rule. Therefore, he denies the writ of habeas corpus so a trial can go forward and the double jeopardy issue dealt with on appeal, if necessary. Burger seems very pleased to have won on this encounter with Perry, although he didn't really contribute much. Paul reports to Perry that Egan had lived and worked in L.A. until 14 months ago, when he disappeared. Boles makes $100,000 a year as the Balfours' Mr. Fixit, with a staff of 150. He reports only to Addison.

Perry meets with Boles, who tells him about Lawrence's encounter with Egan, his call to Boles, and Boles' faking of a hit-and-run. He used Ted's car because his sports car was too small and Ted's happened to have the keys in the ignition. Ted's gun, which Lawrence had taken intending to threaten Egan, is now safely at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Boles demands that Perry not put on a defense but stick to the double jeopardy tactic. When Perry doesn't offer the instant agreement Boles is used to, he threatens the lawyer with the power of the Balfour empire. In response, Perry serves him with a subpoena. Back in the office, Perry is reading his letter of dismissal from Addison when Thurston (John Eldredge), the Balfour family butler, arrives. He shows Perry why he no longer trusts Boles - copies of telegrams from him to Lawrence, replying to the latter's offer to return by telling him to stay in Mexico. Thurston has talked with Ted in jail, and the young man also wants Perry to keep on the case, so Perry agrees.

At the trial, gun repairman Schmidt (John Bleifer) testifies that he adjusted the trigger on a handgun owned by Ted, and identifies test bullets he had fired from the gun before returning it to Ted. Next, a stentorian ballistics expert (Jack Holland) testifies that these test bullets and the bullet that killed Egan were fired from the same gun. Harriet testifies that at Lawrence's bon voyage party Ted told her he knew Egan was back in town and that he should respect the fact that she's a married woman. Boles testifies to his role in covering up the shooting, but substitutes Ted's name for Lawrence. He denies his earlier conversation with Perry. Paul comes into court with evidence Perry has requested, and gives him some surprising news. The records show no telegrams from Lawrence to Boles. Egan died of a heart attack in Oklahoma, where Boles had sent him, eight months ago. Perry confronts Boles with the evidence, and the trouble shooter admits that he knew Egan had died, and even went to Oklahoma to settle his estate. (That makes it obvious who would have had access to Egan's identification to put on the dead body.) Perry accuses him Boles of being Harriet's lover, using Egan's name as cover. When Lawrence fired, Boles merely played dead, then rushed home to answer the call from Lawrence that he knew was coming. Boles denies it all.

Perry next recalls Harriet to the stand. She says that she has remained loyal to her husband, writing him every day and getting the occasional packet of letters from him, subject to the schedule of a runner from his camp. Perry asks how she could correspond with a corpse (perhaps a playful reference to the title of the preceding episode?). Perry produces his evidence: Lawrence's thumbprint from DMV records matches one taken from the dead body. She admits to seeing Boles at the cabin, but went home. Perry says that she was nearby when Lawrence returned and made his call to Boles. Lawrence turned on her, telling her that no matter what, she was exposed as a double dealer and out of the family. She picked up Ted's gun that Lawrence had set down and put a bullet in his head. Blood on the carpet will prove that's where Lawrence died. Sobbing, Harriet confesses.

After the trial, Perry explains that after shooting Lawrence, Harriet called Boles and insisted that he clean up this mess, in which he was involved. He faked the hit-and-run and sent a man to Mexico to pose as Lawrence. Boles even sent the telegrams to Lawrence as part of the pretense that he was still alive. Eventually, Boles would have manufactured evidence of Lawrence's death in Mexico. What gave this away to Perry was the news that Lawrence had never sent Boles any telegrams, so the one worded as a reply to a previous wire was obviously fake. Addison agrees to pay Perry both for his legal efforts and for teaching Ted to fight.