User Reviews

Others have covered leaving the candle burning but does nobody notice or care that the Ol' Captain tells Perry to pull in the rope and takes off without looking to see if his hands are clear ?? Good way to at least break some fingers or possibly yank a thumb off.

Is it odd that Burger left a crime scene anchored in the middle of the lake? It seems more likely the police would tie the boat to a dock for convenience and to prevent everybody from touring the crime scene.

One of the commenters said that one of the wives came into the shop without an appointment. That is incorrect. The clerk (or whatever the job title is) says that they had two appointments down for the same name, and she deleted one because she thought it was a mistake.

... for all of the time Perry Mason expects her to either be in a rickety boat with him or sitting on a fishing boat in the middle of the night to prove some forensic theory. But I digress.

The episode opens with two women waiting for their appointment at a beauty salon. The receptionist calls for Mrs. Bradford. Both women answer. She then pares it down to Mrs. Joseph Bradford. Again they both answer. The two women talk and realize they both live at the same address in the same house, and both have keys to that house. But they have never met. Paging Rod Serling.

Martha Bradford calls her husband at work for him to explain this, but he blows her off and goes aboard his boat in the harbor. Martha then goes to Perry Mason concerning her husband's possible bigamy. But Joe is found murdered on that boat, with Martha's fingerprints on the candle that is aboard. Martha is charged with murder and Perry Mason's representation of her morphs from bigamy to homicide.

Throughout the episode there are some rather fantastic developments that are hard to believe, not the least of which is that practically the entire cast was on Joe Bradford's boat the night of his murder, yet none of these people ever ran into one another.

This episode opens at a beauty salon as the clerk calls for the next appointment, "Mrs. Bradford". Two women come forward and they realize that they have the same last name. The women, Martha Bradford (Nancy Gates) and Rita Bradford (Doris Singleton), begin talking. From each other we learn that both are married to the same person Joe Bradford (Bruce Cowling) and both have keys to the very same house. (Man that is odd)

Martha leaves the place in tears and calls her husband. But he is leaving for San Diego aboard his boat named 'Mary Belle'. So Martha goes home for a night sleep.

During the night she hears someone open the front door. When she goes downstairs she sees footprints from a muddy woman's shoe. She leaves the house and the next day goes talk with Perry.

Perry and Della, with the help of Captain Noble, go out to the 'Mary Belle' and find Joe Bradford murdered. And it seems that the police find Martha's fingerprints on a candle that had been placed in a lantern at an odd angle.

So with this evidence, plus others that Hamilton Burger will present, the case goes to trial with Martha being charged with the murder of her husband, Joe.

As with any Perry episode we learn that at times we have to believe, for TV sake, some incredible set of circumstances. But this episode takes the cake. Here are just a few--

-Rita Bradford was actually married to Joe. But wait to you hear the most ridiculous story she tells about her life. She claims that she has no memory of her life for the last two years. Does not know where she lived, worked or talked with for two whole years. How the writers think the viewers would believe something so stupid is beyond me.

-When Martha is awaken by an unknown person in her house and sees muddy foot prints, instead of calling the police or running, she gets dressed up like she is going to church before leaving the house. She even takes time to look in the mirror to make sure everything looks nice before leaving.

-After the body is discovered, we learn that nearly the entire cast of the show had been on that small boat sometime that evening. However no person saw another person during the course of a few hours. These are some of the things that the writer, of this episode, feel like we will accept without question.

I liked the mystery but please have more faith in the viewers than to write mounds of unbelievable events in just one show. When the episode was over, I felt used. And not in the good way.

There are so many absurd coincidences and contrived events that this one hangs by a thread. First of all, we have two women supposedly living at the same house, married to the same man. Then we have a couple business associates who are in love with one of these women. It is all explained in the end, but for most astute observers, it doesn't pass muster.

The victim in this Perry Mason episode is Bruce Cowling, not the nicest guy in the world, in fact for a while he was thought of as a bigamist. Easy to do when both Nancy Gates and Doris Singleton show up at a hair salon claiming to be Mrs. Cowling.

It's Gates who becomes Raymond Burr's client. An interesting case because it's Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale who row out to Cowling's boat in search of him. All they find is a craft devoid of life and Cowling's dead body. Signs of a blow to the head show somebody killed him, but who.

He wasn't any better in business and associates like Robert Clarke, Whit Bissell, and Henry Corden also would love to have done him in.

As per the title of the story, a candle in a hurricane lamp tilted and burned out provides the clue.

Not crazy about this episode since I don't think Singleton's character was handled well by the writers.