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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
S.S. Van Dine's 'The Greene Murder Case' is a classic detective novel that follows the meticulous investigation of Philo Vance, a sophisticated and intellectual sleuth, into the mysterious death of a wealthy businessman. Set in the 1920s, the book is not only a thrilling whodunit but also a fascinating exploration of the societal and cultural norms of the time. Van Dine's writing style is crisp and precise, with intricate plot twists and clever red herrings that keep the reader guessing until the very end. The novel's attention to detail and logical deduction set it apart as a prime example of Golden Age detective fiction. The Greene Murder Case is a must-read for fans of classic mystery novels and those interested in the evolution of the genre. Readers will appreciate Van Dine's meticulous storytelling and the brilliant mind of Philo Vance as he unravels the complex web of clues surrounding the murder.
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The Greene Murder Case
Table of Contents
Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
—Hamlet.
TO
NORBERT L. LEDERER
Αγαθὴ δὲ παράφασίς ἐστιν ἐταίρου
CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK
Philo Vance
John F.-X. Markham
District Attorney of New York County.
Mrs. Tobias Greene
The mistress of the Greene mansion.
Julia Greene
The eldest daughter.
Sibella Greene
Another daughter.
Ada Greene
The youngest daughter.
Chester Greene
The elder son.
Rex Greene
The younger son.
Dr. Arthur Von Blon
The Greene family physician.
Sproot
The Greene butler.
Gertrude Mannheim
The cook.
Hemming
The senior maid.
Barton
The junior maid.
Miss Craven
Mrs. Greene’s nurse.
Chief Inspector O’Brien
Of the Police Department of New York City.
William M. Moran
Commanding officer of the Detective Bureau.
Ernest Heath
Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Captain Anthony P. Jerym
Bertillon expert.
Captain Dubois
Finger-print expert.
Dr. Emanuel Doremus
Medical Examiner.
Dr. Drumm
An official police surgeon.
Marie O’Brien
A Police nurse.
Swacker
Secretary to the District Attorney.
Currie
Vance’s valet.
CHAPTER I A DOUBLE TRAGEDY
(Tuesday, November 9; 10 a. m.)
It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers—men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton—have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times—a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime. And yet I realize, as I read over my own voluminous notes on the case, and inspect the various documents relating to it, how little of its inner history ever came to light, and how impossible it would be for even the most imaginative chronicler to fill in the hiatuses.
The world, of course, knows the external facts. For over a month the press of two continents was filled with accounts of this appalling tragedy; and even the bare outline was sufficient to gratify the public’s craving for the abnormal and the spectacular. But the inside story of the catastrophe surpassed even the wildest flights of public fancy; and, as I now sit down to divulge those facts for the first time, I am oppressed with a feeling akin to unreality, although I was a witness to most of them and hold in my possession the incontestable records of their actuality.
Of the fiendish ingenuity which lay behind this terrible crime, of the warped psychological motives that inspired it, and of the strange hidden sources of its technic, the world is completely ignorant. Moreover, no explanation has ever been given of the analytic steps that led to its solution. Nor have the events attending the mechanism of that solution—events in themselves highly dramatic and unusual—ever been recounted. The public believes that the termination of the case was a result of the usual police methods of investigation; but this is because the public is unaware of many of the vital factors of the crime itself, and because both the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office have, as if by tacit agreement, refused to make known the entire truth—whether for fear of being disbelieved or merely because there are certain things so terrible that no man wishes to talk of them, I do not know.
The record, therefore, which I am about to set down is the first complete and unedited history of the Greene holocaust.1 I feel that now the truth should be known, for it is history, and one should not shrink from historical facts. Also, I believe that the credit for the solution of this case should go where it belongs.
The man who elucidated the mystery and brought to a close that palimpsest of horror was, curiously enough, in no way officially connected with the police; and in all the published accounts of the murder his name was not once mentioned. And yet, had it not been for him and his novel methods of criminal deduction, the heinous plot against the Greene family would have been conclusively successful. The police in their researches were dealing dogmatically with the evidential appearances of the crime, whereas the operations of the criminal were being conducted on a plane quite beyond the comprehension of the ordinary investigator.
This man who, after weeks of sedulous and disheartening analysis, eventually ferreted out the source of the horror, was a young social aristocrat, an intimate friend of John F.-X. Markham, the District Attorney. His name I am not at liberty to divulge, but for the purposes of these chronicles I have chosen to call him Philo Vance. He is no longer in this country, having transferred his residence several years ago to a villa outside of Florence; and, since he has no intention of returning to America, he has acceded to my request to publish the history of the criminal cases in which he participated as a sort of amicus curiæ. Markham also has retired to private life; and Sergeant Ernest Heath, that doughty and honest officer of the Homicide Bureau who officially handled the Greene case for the Police Department, has, through an unexpected legacy, been able to gratify his life’s ambition to breed fancy wyandottes on a model farm in the Mohawk Valley. Thus circumstances have made it possible for me to publish my intimate records of the Greene tragedy.
A few words are necessary to explain my own participation in the case. (I say “participation,” though, in reality, my rôle was that of passive spectator.) For several years I had been Vance’s personal attorney. I had resigned from my father’s law firm—Van Dine, Davis & Van Dine—in order to devote myself exclusively to Vance’s legal and financial needs, which, by the way, were not many. Vance and I had been friends from our undergraduate days at Harvard, and I found in my new duties as his legal agent and monetary steward a sinecure combined with many social and cultural compensations.
Vance at that time was thirty-four years old. He was just under six feet, slender, sinewy, and graceful. His chiselled regular features gave his face the attraction of strength and uniform modelling, but a sardonic coldness of expression precluded the designation of handsome. He had aloof gray eyes, a straight, slender nose, and a mouth suggesting both cruelty and asceticism. But, despite the severity of his lineaments—which acted like an impenetrable glass wall between him and his fellows—, he was highly sensitive and mobile; and, though his manner was somewhat detached and supercilious, he exerted an undeniable fascination over those who knew him at all well.
Much of his education had been acquired in Europe, and he still retained a slight Oxonian accent and intonation, though I happen to be aware that this was no affectation: he cared too little for the opinions of others to trouble about maintaining any pose. He was an indefatigable student. His mind was ever eager for knowledge, and he devoted much of his time to the study of ethnology and psychology. His greatest intellectual enthusiasm was art, and he fortunately had an income sufficient to indulge his passion for collecting. It was, however, his interest in psychology and his application of it to individual behaviorism that first turned his attention to the criminal problems which came under Markham’s jurisdiction.
The first case in which he participated was, as I have recorded elsewhere, the murder of Alvin Benson.2 The second was the seemingly insoluble strangling of the famous Broadway beauty, Margaret Odell.3 And in the late fall of the same year came the Greene tragedy. As in the two former cases, I kept a complete record of this new investigation. I possessed myself of every available document, making verbatim copies of those claimed for the police archives, and even jotted down the numerous conversations that took place in and out of conference between Vance and the official investigators. And, in addition, I kept a diary which, for elaborateness and completeness, would have been the despair of Samuel Pepys.
The Greene murder case occurred toward the end of Markham’s first year in office. As you may remember, the winter came very early that season. There were two severe blizzards in November, and the amount of snowfall for that month broke all local records for eighteen years. I mention this fact of the early snows because it played a sinister part in the Greene affair: it was, indeed, one of the vital factors of the murderer’s scheme. No one has yet understood, or even sensed, the connection between the unseasonable weather of that late fall and the fatal tragedy that fell upon the Greene household; but that is because all of the dark secrets of the case were not made known.
Vance was projected into the Benson murder as the result of a direct challenge from Markham; and his activities in the Canary case were due to his own expressed desire to lend a hand. But pure coincidence was responsible for his participation in the Greene investigation. During the two months that had elapsed since his solution of the Canary’s death Markham had called upon him several times regarding moot points of criminal detection in connection with the routine work of the District Attorney’s office; and it was during an informal discussion of one of these problems that the Greene case was first mentioned.
Markham and Vance had long been friends. Though dissimilar in tastes and even in ethical outlook, they nevertheless respected each other profoundly. I have often marvelled at the friendship of these two antipodal men; but as the years went by I came more and more to understand it. It was as if they were drawn together by those very qualities which each realized—perhaps with a certain repressed regret—were lacking in his own nature. Markham was forthright, brusque, and, on occasion, domineering, taking life with grim and serious concern, and following the dictates of his legal conscience in the face of every obstacle: honest, incorruptible, and untiring. Vance, on the other hand, was volatile, debonair, and possessed of a perpetual Juvenalian cynicism, smiling ironically at the bitterest realities, and consistently fulfilling the rôle of a whimsically disinterested spectator of life. But, withal, he understood people as profoundly as he understood art, and his dissection of motives and his shrewd readings of character were—as I had many occasions to witness—uncannily accurate. Markham apprehended these qualities in Vance, and sensed their true value.
It was not yet ten o’clock of the morning of November the 9th when Vance and I, after motoring to the old Criminal Courts Building on the corner of Franklin and Centre Streets, went directly to the District Attorney’s office on the fourth floor. On that momentous forenoon two gangsters, each accusing the other of firing the fatal shot in a recent pay-roll hold-up, were to be cross-examined by Markham; and this interview was to decide the question as to which of the men would be charged with murder and which held as a State’s witness. Markham and Vance had discussed the situation the night before in the lounge-room of the Stuyvesant Club, and Vance had expressed a desire to be present at the examination. Markham had readily assented, and so we had risen early and driven down-town.
The interview with the two men lasted for an hour, and Vance’s disconcerting opinion was that neither was guilty of the actual shooting.
“Y’ know, Markham,” he drawled, when the sheriff had returned the prisoners to the Tombs, “those two Jack Sheppards are quite sincere: each one thinks he’s telling the truth. Ergo, neither of ’em fired the shot. A distressin’ predicament. They’re obvious gallows-birds—born for the gibbet; and it’s a beastly shame not to be able to round out their destinies in proper fashion. . . . I say, wasn’t there another participant in the hold-up?”
Markham nodded. “A third got away. According to these two, it was a well-known gangster named Eddie Maleppo.”
“Then Eduardo is your man.”4
Markham did not reply, and Vance rose lazily and reached for his ulster.
“By the by,” he said, slipping into his coat, “I note that our upliftin’ press bedecked its front pages this morning with head-lines about a pogrom at the old Greene mansion last night. Wherefore?”
Markham glanced quickly at the clock on the wall, and frowned.
“That reminds me. Chester Greene called up the first thing this morning and insisted on seeing me. I told him eleven o’clock.”
“Where do you fit in?” Vance had taken his hand from the door-knob, and drew out his cigarette-case.
“I don’t!” snapped Markham. “But people think the District Attorney’s office is a kind of clearing-house for all their troubles. It happens, however, that I’ve known Chester Greene a long time—we’re both members of the Marylebone Golf Club—and so I must listen to his plaint about what was obviously an attempt to annex the famous Greene plate.”
“Burglary—eh, what?” Vance took a few puffs on his cigarette. “With two women shot?”
“Oh, it was a miserable business! An amateur, no doubt. Got in a panic, shot up the place, and bolted.”
“Seems a dashed curious proceeding.” Vance abstractedly reseated himself in a large armchair near the door. “Did the antique cutlery actually disappear?”
“Nothing was taken. The thief was evidently frightened off before he made his haul.”
“Sounds a bit thick, don’t y’ know.—An amateur thief breaks into a prominent home, casts a predat’ry eye on the dining-room silver, takes alarm, goes up-stairs and shoots two women in their respective boudoirs, and then flees. . . . Very touchin’ and all that, but unconvincin’. Whence came this caressin’ theory?”
Markham was glowering, but when he spoke it was with an effort at restraint.
“Feathergill was on duty last night when the call was relayed from Headquarters, and accompanied the police to the house. He agrees with their conclusions.”5
“Nevertheless, I could bear to know why Chester Greene is desirous of having polite converse with you.”
Markham compressed his lips. He was not in cordial mood that morning, and Vance’s flippant curiosity irked him. After a moment, however, he said grudgingly:
“Since the attempted robbery interests you so keenly, you may, if you insist, wait and hear what Greene has to say.”
“I’ll stay,” smiled Vance, removing his coat. “I’m weak; just can’t resist a passionate entreaty. . . . Which one of the Greenes is Chester? And how is he related to the two deceased?”
“There was only one murder,” Markham corrected him in a tone of forbearance. “The oldest daughter—an unmarried woman in her early forties—was killed instantly. A younger daughter, who was also shot, has, I believe, a chance of recovery.”
“And Chester?”
“Chester is the elder son, a man of forty or thereabouts. He was the first person on the scene after the shots had been fired.”
“What other members of the family are there? I know old Tobias Greene has gone to his Maker.”
“Yes, old Tobias died about twelve years ago. But his wife is still living, though she’s a helpless paralytic. Then there are—or rather were—five children: the oldest, Julia; next, Chester; then another daughter, Sibella, a few years under thirty, I should say; then Rex, a sickly, bookish boy a year or so younger than Sibella; and Ada, the youngest—an adopted daughter twenty-two or three, perhaps.”
“And it was Julia who was killed, eh? Which of the other two girls was shot?”
“The younger—Ada. Her room, it seems, is across the hall from Julia’s, and the thief apparently got in it by mistake while making his escape. As I understand it, he entered Ada’s room immediately after firing on Julia, saw his error, fired again, and then fled, eventually going down the stairs and out the main entrance.”
Vance smoked a while in silence.
“Your hypothetical intruder must have been deuced confused to have mistaken Ada’s bedroom door for the staircase, what? And then there’s the query: what was this anonymous gentleman, who had called to collect the plate, doing above-stairs?”
“Probably looking for jewellery.” Markham was rapidly losing patience. “I am not omniscient.” There was irony in his inflection.
“Now, now, Markham!” pleaded Vance cajolingly. “Don’t be vindictive. Your Greene burglary promises several nice points in academic speculation. Permit me to indulge my idle whims.”
At that moment Swacker, Markham’s youthful and alert secretary, appeared at the swinging door which communicated with a narrow chamber between the main waiting-room and the District Attorney’s private office.
“Mr. Chester Greene is here,” he announced.
1. It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to state that I have received official permission for my task.
2. “The Benson Murder Case”.
3. “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case”.
4. This was subsequently proved correct. Nearly a year later Maleppo was arrested in Detroit, extradited to New York, and convicted of the murder. His two companions had already been successfully prosecuted for robbery. They are now serving long terms in Sing Sing.
5. Amos Feathergill was then an Assistant District Attorney. He later ran on the Tammany ticket for assemblyman, and was elected.
CHAPTER II THE INVESTIGATION OPENS
(Tuesday, November 9; 11 a. m.)
When Chester Greene entered it was obvious he was under a nervous strain; but his nervousness evoked no sympathy in me. From the very first I disliked the man. He was of medium height and was bordering on corpulence. There was something soft and flabby in his contours; and, though he was dressed with studied care, there were certain signs of overemphasis about his clothes. His cuffs were too tight; his collar was too snug; and the colored silk handkerchief hung too far out of his breast pocket. He was slightly bald, and the lids of his close-set eyes projected like those of a man with Bright’s disease. His mouth, surmounted by a close-cropped blond moustache, was loose; and his chin receded slightly and was deeply creased below the under lip. He typified the pampered idler.
When he had shaken hands with Markham, and Vance and I had been introduced, he seated himself and meticulously inserted a brown Russian cigarette in a long amber-and-gold holder.
“I’d be tremendously obliged, Markham,” he said, lighting his cigarette from an ivory pocket-lighter, “if you’d make a personal investigation of the row that occurred at our diggin’s last night. The police will never get anywhere the way they’re going about it. Good fellows, you understand—the police. But . . . well, there’s something about this affair—don’t know just how to put it. Anyway, I don’t like it.”
Markham studied him closely for several moments.
“Just what’s on your mind, Greene?”
The other crushed out his cigarette, though he had taken no more than half a dozen puffs, and drummed indecisively on the arm of his chair.
“Wish I knew. It’s a rum affair—damned rum. There’s something back of it, too—something that’s going to raise the very devil if we don’t stop it. Can’t explain it. It’s a feeling I’ve got.”
“Perhaps Mr. Greene is psychic,” commented Vance, with a look of bland innocence.
The man swung about and scrutinized Vance with aggressive condescension. “Tosh!” He brought out another Russian cigarette, and turned again to Markham: “I do wish you’d take a peep at the situation.”
Markham hesitated. “Surely you’ve some reason for disagreeing with the police and appealing to me.”
“Funny thing, but I haven’t.” (It seemed to me Greene’s hand shook slightly as he lit his second cigarette.) “I simply know that my mind rejects the burglar story automatically.”
It was difficult to tell if he were being frank or deliberately hiding something. I did feel, however, that some sort of fear lurked beneath his uneasiness; and I also got the impression that he was far from being heart-broken over the tragedy.
“It seems to me,” declared Markham, “that the theory of the burglar is entirely consistent with the facts. There have been many other cases of a housebreaker suddenly taking alarm, losing his head, and needlessly shooting people.”
Greene rose abruptly and began pacing up and down.
“I can’t argue the case,” he muttered. “It’s beyond all that, if you understand me.” He looked quickly at the District Attorney with staring eyes. “Gad! It’s got me in a cold sweat.”
“It’s all too vague and intangible,” Markham observed kindly. “I’m inclined to think the tragedy has upset you. Perhaps after a day or two——”
Greene lifted a protesting hand.
“It’s no go. I’m telling you, Markham, the police will never find their burglar. I feel it—here.” He mincingly laid a manicured hand on his breast.
Vance had been watching him with a faint suggestion of amusement. Now he stretched his legs before him and gazed up at the ceiling.
“I say, Mr. Greene—pardon the intrusion on your esoteric gropings—but do you know of any one with a reason for wanting your two sisters out of the way?”
The man looked blank for a moment.
“No,” he answered finally; “can’t say that I do. Who, in Heaven’s name, would want to kill two harmless women?”
“I haven’t the groggiest notion. But, since you repudiate the burglar theory, and since the two ladies were undoubtedly shot, it’s inferable that some one sought their demise; and it occurred to me that you, being their brother and domiciled en famille, might know of some one who harbored homicidal sentiments toward them.”
Greene bristled, and thrust his head forward. “I know of no one,” he blurted. Then, turning to Markham, he continued wheedlingly: “If I had the slightest suspicion, don’t you think I’d come out with it? This thing has got on my nerves. I’ve been mulling over it all night, and it’s—it’s bothersome, frightfully bothersome.”
Markham nodded non-committally, and rising, walked to the window, where he stood, his hands behind him, gazing down on the gray stone masonry of the Tombs.
Vance, despite his apparent apathy, had been studying Greene closely; and, as Markham turned to the window, he straightened up slightly in his chair.
“Tell me,” he began, an ingratiating note in his voice; “just what happened last night? I understand you were the first to reach the prostrate women.”
“I was the first to reach my sister Julia,” retorted Greene, with a hint of resentment. “It was Sproot, the butler, who found Ada unconscious, bleeding from a nasty wound in her back.”
“Her back, eh?” Vance leaned forward, and lifted his eyebrows. “She was shot from behind, then?”
“Yes.” Greene frowned and inspected his fingernails, as if he too sensed something disturbing in the fact.
“And Miss Julia Greene: was she too shot from behind?”
“No—from the front.”
“Extr’ordin’ry!” Vance blew a ring of smoke toward the dusty chandelier. “And had both women retired for the night?”
“An hour before. . . . But what has all that got to do with it?”
“One never knows, does one? However, it’s always well to be in possession of these little details when trying to run down the elusive source of a psychic seizure.”
“Psychic seizure be damned!” growled Greene truculently. “Can’t a man have a feeling about something without——?”
“Quite—quite. But you’ve asked for the District Attorney’s assistance, and I’m sure he would like a few data before making a decision.”
Markham came forward and sat down on the edge of the table. His curiosity had been aroused, and he indicated to Greene his sympathy with Vance’s interrogation.
Greene pursed his lips, and returned his cigarette-holder to his pocket.
“Oh, very well. What else do you want to know?”
“You might relate for us,” dulcetly resumed Vance, “the exact order of events after you heard the first shot. I presume you did hear the shot.”
“Certainly I heard it—couldn’t have helped hearing it. Julia’s room is next to mine, and I was still awake. I jumped into my slippers and pulled on my dressing-gown; then I went out into the hall. It was dark, and I felt my way along the wall until I reached Julia’s door. I opened it and looked in—didn’t know who might be there waiting to pop me—and I saw her lying in bed, the front of her nightgown covered with blood. There was no one else in the room, and I went to her immediately. Just then I heard another shot which sounded as if it came from Ada’s room. I was a bit muzzy by this time—didn’t know what I’d better do; and as I stood by Julia’s bed in something of a funk—oh, I was in a funk all right. . .”
“Can’t say that I blame you,” Vance encouraged him.
Greene nodded. “A damned ticklish position to be in. Well, anyway, as I stood there, I heard some one coming down the stairs from the servants’ quarters on the third floor, and recognized old Sproot’s tread. He fumbled along in the dark, and I heard him enter Ada’s door. Then he called to me, and I hurried over. Ada was lying in front of the dressing-table; and Sproot and I lifted her on the bed. I’d gone a bit weak in the knees; was expecting any minute to hear another shot—don’t know why. Anyway, it didn’t come; and then I heard Sproot’s voice at the hall telephone calling up Doctor Von Blon.”
“I see nothing in your account, Greene, inconsistent with the theory of a burglar,” observed Markham. “And furthermore, Feathergill, my assistant, says there were two sets of confused footprints in the snow outside the front door.”
Greene shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer.
“By the by, Mr. Greene,”—Vance had slipped down in his chair and was staring into space—“you said that when you looked into Miss Julia’s room you saw her in bed. How was that? Did you turn on the light?”
“Why, no!” The man appeared puzzled by the question. “The light was on.”
There was a flutter of interest in Vance’s eyes.
“And how about Miss Ada’s room? Was the light on there also?”
“Yes.”
Vance reached into his pocket, and, drawing out his cigarette-case, carefully and deliberately selected a cigarette. I recognized in the action an evidence of repressed inner excitement.
“So the lights were on in both rooms. Most interestin’.”
Markham, too, recognized the eagerness beneath his apparent indifference, and regarded him expectantly.
“And,” pursued Vance, after lighting his cigarette leisurely, “how long a time would you say elapsed between the two shots?”
Greene was obviously annoyed by this cross-examination, but he answered readily.
“Two or three minutes—certainly no longer.”
“Still,” ruminated Vance, “after you heard the first shot you rose from your bed, donned slippers and robe, went into the hall, felt along the wall to the next room, opened the door cautiously, peered inside, and then crossed the room to the bed—all this, I gather, before the second shot was fired. Is that correct?”
“Certainly it’s correct.”
“Well, well! As you say, two or three minutes. Yes, at least that. Astonishin’!” Vance turned to Markham. “Really, y’ know, old man, I don’t wish to influence your judgment, but I rather think you ought to accede to Mr. Greene’s request to take a hand in this investigation. I too have a psychic feeling about the case. Something tells me that your eccentric burglar will prove an ignis fatuus.”
Markham eyed him with meditative curiosity. Not only had Vance’s questioning of Greene interested him keenly, but he knew, as a result of long experience, that Vance would not have made the suggestion had he not had a good reason for doing so. I was in no wise surprised, therefore, when he turned to his restive visitor and said:
“Very well, Greene, I’ll see what I can do in the matter. I’ll probably be at your house early this afternoon. Please see that every one is present, as I’ll want to question them.”
Greene held out a trembling hand. “The domestic roster—family and servants—will be complete when you arrive.”
He strode pompously from the room.
Vance sighed. “Not a nice creature, Markham—not at all a nice creature. I shall never be a politician if it involves an acquaintance with such gentlemen.”
Markham seated himself at his desk with a disgruntled air.
“Greene is highly regarded as a social—not a political—decoration,” he said maliciously. “He belongs to your totem, not mine.”
“Fancy that!” Vance stretched himself luxuriously. “Still, it’s you who fascinate him. Intuition tells me he is not overfond of me.”
“You did treat him a bit cavalierly. Sarcasm is not exactly a means of endearment.”
“But, Markham old thing, I wasn’t pining for Chester’s affection.”
“You think he knows, or suspects, something?”
Vance gazed through the long window into the bleak sky beyond.
“I wonder,” he murmured. Then: “Is Chester, by any chance, a typical representative of the Greene family? Of recent years I’ve done so little mingling with the élite that I’m woefully ignorant of the East Side nabobs.”
Markham nodded reflectively.
“I’m afraid he is. The original Greene stock was sturdy, but the present generation seems to have gone somewhat to pot. Old Tobias the Third—Chester’s father—was a rugged and, in many ways, admirable character. He appears, however, to have been the last heir of the ancient Greene qualities. What’s left of the family has suffered some sort of disintegration. They’re not exactly soft, but tainted with patches of incipient decay, like fruit that’s lain on the ground too long. Too much money and leisure, I imagine, and too little restraint. On the other hand, there’s a certain intellectuality lurking in the new Greenes. They all seem to have good minds, even if futile and misdirected. In fact, I think you underestimate Chester. For all his banalities and effeminate mannerisms, he’s far from being as stupid as you regard him.”
“I regard Chester as stupid! My dear Markham! You wrong me abominably. No, no. There’s nothing of the anointed ass about our Chester. He’s shrewder even than you think him. Those œdematous eyelids veil a pair of particularly crafty eyes. Indeed, it was largely his studied pose of fatuousness that led me to suggest that you aid and abet in the investigation.”
Markham leaned back and narrowed his eyes.
“What’s in your mind, Vance?”
“I told you. A psychic seizure—same like Chester’s subliminal visitation.”
Markham knew, by this elusive answer, that for the moment Vance had no intention of being more definite; and after a moment of scowling silence he turned to the telephone.
“If I’m to take on this case, I’d better find out who has charge of it and get what preliminary information I can.”
He called up Inspector Moran, the commanding officer of the Detective Bureau. After a brief conversation he turned to Vance with a smile.
“Your friend, Sergeant Heath, has the case in hand. He happened to be in the office just now, and is coming here immediately.”6
In less than fifteen minutes Heath arrived. Despite the fact that he had been up most of the night, he appeared unusually alert and energetic. His broad, pugnacious features were as imperturbable as ever, and his pale-blue eyes held their habitual penetrating intentness. He greeted Markham with an elaborate, though perfunctory, handshake; and then, seeing Vance, relaxed his features into a good-natured smile.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Vance! What have you been up to, sir?”
Vance rose and shook hands with him.
“Alas, Sergeant, I’ve been immersed in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Renaissance façades, and other such trivialities, since I saw you last.7 But I’m happy to note that crime is picking up again. It’s a deuced drab world without a nice murky murder now and then, don’t y’ know.”
Heath cocked an eye, and turned inquiringly to the District Attorney. He had long since learned how to read between the lines of Vance’s badinage.
“It’s this Greene case, Sergeant,” said Markham.
“I thought so.” Heath sat down heavily, and inserted a black cigar between his lips. “But nothing’s broken yet. We’re rounding up all the regulars, and looking into their alibis for last night. But it’ll take several days before the check-up’s complete. If the bird who did the job hadn’t got scared before he grabbed the swag, we might be able to trace him through the pawnshops and fences. But something rattled him, or he wouldn’t have shot up the works the way he did. And that’s what makes me think he may be a new one at the racket. If he is, it’ll make our job harder.” He held a match in cupped hands to his cigar, and puffed furiously. “What did you want to know about the prowl, sir?”
Markham hesitated. The Sergeant’s matter-of-fact assumption that a common burglar was the culprit disconcerted him.
“Chester Greene was here,” he explained presently; “and he seems convinced that the shooting was not the work of a thief. He asked me, as a special favor, to look into the matter.”
Heath gave a derisive grunt.
“Who but a burglar in a panic would shoot down two women?”
“Quite so, Sergeant.” It was Vance who answered. “Still, the lights were turned on in both rooms, though the women had gone to bed an hour before; and there was an interval of several minutes between the two shots.”
“I know all that.” Heath spoke impatiently. “But if an amachoor did the job, we can’t tell exactly what did happen up-stairs there last night. When a bird loses his head——”
“Ah! There’s the rub. When a thief loses his head, d’ye see, he isn’t apt to go from room to room turning on the lights, even assuming he knows where and how to turn them on. And he certainly isn’t going to dally around for several minutes in a black hall between such fantastic operations, especially after he has shot some one and alarmed the house, what? It doesn’t look like panic to me; it looks strangely like design. Moreover, why should this precious amateur of yours be cavorting about the boudoirs up-stairs when the loot was in the dining-room below?”
“We’ll learn all about that when we’ve got our man,” countered Heath doggedly.
“The point is, Sergeant,” put in Markham, “I’ve given Mr. Greene my promise to look into the matter, and I wanted to get what details I could from you. You understand, of course,” he added mollifyingly, “that I shall not interfere with your activities in any way. Whatever the outcome of the case, your department will receive entire credit.”
“Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Experience had taught Heath that he had nothing to fear in the way of lost kudos when working with Markham. “But I don’t think, in spite of Mr. Vance’s ideas, that you’ll find much in the Greene case to warrant attention.”
“Perhaps not,” Markham admitted. “However, I’ve committed myself, and I think I’ll run out this afternoon and look over the situation, if you’ll give me the lie of the land.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Heath chewed on his cigar cogitatingly. “A Doctor Von Blon—the Greene family physician—phoned Headquarters about midnight. I’d just got in from an up-town stick-up call, and I hopped out to the house with a couple of the boys from the Bureau. I found the two women, like you know, one dead and the other unconscious—both shot. I phoned Doc Doremus,8 and then looked the place over. Mr. Feathergill came along and lent a hand; but we didn’t find much of anything. The fellow that did the job musta got in by the front door some way, for there was a set of footprints in the snow coming and going, besides Doctor Von Blon’s. But the snow was too flaky to get any good impressions. It stopped snowing along about eleven o’clock last night; and there’s no doubt that the prints belonged to the burglar, for no one else, except the doctor, had come or gone after the storm.”
“An amateur housebreaker with a front-door key to the Greene mansion,” murmured Vance. “Extr’ordin’ry!”
“I’m not saying he had a key, sir,” protested Heath. “I’m simply telling you what we found. The door mighta been unlatched by mistake; or some one mighta opened it for him.”
“Go on with the story, Sergeant,” urged Markham, giving Vance a reproving look.
“Well, after Doc Doremus got there and made an examination of the older woman’s body and inspected the younger one’s wound, I questioned all the family and the servants—a butler, two maids, and a cook. Chester Greene and the butler were the only ones who had heard the first shot, which was fired about half past eleven. But the second shot roused old Mrs. Greene—her room adjoins the younger daughter’s. The rest of the household had slept through all the excitement; but this Chester fellow had woke ’em all up by the time I got there. I talked to all of ’em, but nobody knew anything. After a coupla hours I left a man inside and another outside, and came away. Then I set the usual machinery going; and this morning Captain Dubois went over the place the best he could for finger-prints. Doc Doremus has got the body for an autopsy, and we’ll get a report to-night. But there’ll be nothing helpful from that quarter. She was fired on from in front at close range—almost a contact shot. And the other woman—the young one—was all powder-marked, and her nightgown was burnt. She was shot from behind.—That’s about all the dope.”
“Have you been able to get any sort of a statement from the younger one?”
“Not yet. She was unconscious last night, and this morning she was too weak to talk. But the doctor—Von Blon—said we could probably question her this afternoon. We may get something out of her, in case she got a look at the bird before he shot her.”
“That suggests something to me, Sergeant.” Vance had been listening passively to the recital, but now he drew in his legs, and lifted himself a little. “Did any member of the Greene household possess a gun?”
Heath gave him a sharp look.
“This Chester Greene said he had an old .32 revolver he used to keep in a desk drawer in his bedroom.”
“Oh, did he, now? And did you see the gun?”
“I asked him for it, but he couldn’t find it. Said he hadn’t seen it for years, but that probably it was around somewheres. Promised to dig it up for me to-day.”
“Don’t hang any fond hopes on his finding it, Sergeant.” Vance looked at Markham musingly. “I begin to comprehend the basis of Chester’s psychic perturbation. I fear he’s a crass materialist after all. . . . Sad, sad.”
“You think he missed the gun, and took fright?”
“Well—something like that . . . perhaps. One can’t tell. It’s deuced confusin’.” He turned an indolent eye on the Sergeant. “By the by, what sort of gun did your burglar use?”
Heath gave a gruff, uneasy laugh.
“You score there, Mr. Vance. I’ve got both bullets—thirty-twos, fired from a revolver, not an automatic. But you’re not trying to intimate——”
“Tut, tut, Sergeant. Like Goethe, I’m merely seeking for more illumination, if one may translate Licht——”
Markham interrupted this garrulous evasion.
“I’m going to the Greene house after lunch, Sergeant. Can you come along?”
“Sure I can, sir. I was going out anyway.”
“Good.” Markham brought forth a box of cigars. “Meet me here at two. . . . And take a couple of these Perfectos before you go.”
Heath selected the cigars, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. At the door he turned with a bantering grin.
“You coming along with us, Mr. Vance—to guide our erring footsteps, as they say?”
“Nothing could keep me away,” declared Vance.
6. It was Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, who had been in charge of both the Benson and the Canary cases; and, although he had been openly antagonistic to Vance during the first of these investigations, a curious good-fellowship had later grown up between them. Vance admired the Sergeant’s dogged and straightforward qualities; and Heath had developed a keen respect—with certain reservations, however—for Vance’s abilities.
7. Vance, after reading proof of this sentence, requested me to make mention here of that beautiful volume, “Terra Cotta of the Italian Renaissance,” recently published by the National Terra Cotta Society, New York.
8. Doctor Emanuel Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner.
CHAPTER III AT THE GREENE MANSION
(Tuesday, November 9; 2.30 p. m.)
The Greene mansion—as it was commonly referred to by New Yorkers—was a relic of the city’s ancien régime. It had stood for three generations at the eastern extremity of 53d Street, two of its oriel windows actually overhanging the murky waters of the East River. The lot upon which the house was built extended through the entire block—a distance of two hundred feet—and had an equal frontage on the cross-streets. The character of the neighborhood had changed radically since the early days; but the spirit of commercial advancement had left the domicile of the Greenes untouched. It was an oasis of idealism and calm in the midst of moiling commercial enterprise; and one of the stipulations in old Tobias Greene’s last will and testament had been that the mansion should stand intact for at least a quarter of a century after his death, as a monument to him and his ancestors. One of his last acts on earth was to erect a high stone wall about the entire property, with a great double iron gateway opening on 53d Street and a postern-gate for tradesmen giving on 52d Street.
THE GREENE MANSION, NEW YORK, AS IT APPEARED AT THE TIME OF THE NOTORIOUS GREENE MURDER CASE.
The mansion itself was two and a half stories high, surmounted by gabled spires and chimney clusters. It was what architects call, with a certain intonation of contempt, a “château flamboyant”; but no derogatory appellation could detract from the quiet dignity and the air of feudal traditionalism that emanated from its great rectangular blocks of gray limestone. The house was sixteenth-century Gothic in style, with more than a suspicion of the new Italian ornament in its parts; and the pinnacles and shelves suggested the Byzantine. But, for all its diversity of detail, it was not flowery, and would have held no deep attraction for the Freemason architects of the Middle Ages. It was not “bookish” in effect; it exuded the very essence of the old.
In the front yard were maples and clipped evergreens, interspersed with hydrangea and lilac-bushes; and at the rear was a row of weeping willows overhanging the river. Along the herring-bone-bond brick walks were high quickset hedges of hawthorn; and the inner sides of the encircling wall were covered with compact espaliers. To the west of the house an asphalt driveway led to a double garage at the rear—an addition built by the newer generation of Greenes. But here too were boxwood hedgerows which cloaked the driveway’s modernity.
As we entered the grounds that gray November afternoon an atmosphere of foreboding bleakness seemed to have settled over the estate. The trees and shrubs were all bare, except the evergreens, which were laden with patches of snow. The trellises stood stripped along the walls, like clinging black skeletons; and, save for the front walk, which had been hastily and imperfectly swept, the grounds were piled high with irregular snow-drifts. The gray of the mansion’s masonry was almost the color of the brooding overcast sky; and I felt a premonitory chill of eeriness pass over me as we mounted the shallow steps that led to the high front door, with its pointed pediment above the deeply arched entrance.
Sproot, the butler—a little old man with white hair and a heavily seamed capriform face—admitted us with silent, funereal dignity (he had evidently been apprised of our coming); and we were ushered at once into the great gloomy drawing-room whose heavily curtained windows overlooked the river. A few moments later Chester Greene came in and greeted Markham fulsomely. Heath and Vance and me he included in a single supercilious nod.
“Awfully good of you to come, Markham,” he said, with nervous eagerness, seating himself on the edge of a chair and taking out his cigarette-holder. “I suppose you’ll want to hold an inquisition first. Whom’ll I summon as a starter?”
“We can let that go for the moment,” said Markham. “First, I’d like to know something concerning the servants. Tell me what you can about them.”
Greene moved restlessly in his chair, and seemed to have difficulty lighting his cigarette.
“There’s only four. Big house and all that, but we don’t need much help. Julia always acted as housekeeper, and Ada looked after the Mater.—To begin with, there’s old Sproot. He’s been butler, seneschal, and majordomo for us for thirty years. Regular family retainer—kind you read about in English novels—devoted, loyal, humble, dictatorial, and snooping. And a damned nuisance, I may add. Then there are two maids—one to look after the rooms and the other for general service, though the women monopolize her, mostly for useless fiddle-faddle. Hemming, the older maid, has been with us ten years. Still wears corsets and fit-easy shoes. Deep-water Baptist, I believe—excruciatingly devout. Barton, the other maid, is young and flighty: thinks she’s irresistible, knows a little table-d’hôte French, and is the kind that’s constantly expecting the males of the family to kiss her behind the door. Sibella picked her out—she’s just the kind Sibella would pick out. Been adorning our house and shirking the hard work for about two years. The cook’s a stodgy German woman, a typical Hausfrau—voluminous bosoms and number-ten feet. Puts in all her spare time writing to distant nieces and nephews in the upper reaches of the Rhine basin somewhere; and boasts that the most fastidious person could eat off her kitchen floor, it’s that clean; though I’ve never tried it. The old man engaged her a year before he died; gave orders she was to remain as long as she liked.—There you have the personnel of the backstairs. Of course, there is a gardener who loafs about the lawn in summer. He hibernates in a speak-easy up Harlem way.”
“No chauffeur?”
“A nuisance we dispense with. Julia hated motor-cars, and Rex is afraid to travel in them—squeamish lad, Rex. I drive my own racer, and Sibella’s a regular Barney Oldfield. Ada drives, too, when the Mater isn’t using her and Sibella’s car is idle.—So endeth.”
Markham had been making notes as Greene rambled along with his information. At length he put out the cigar he had been smoking.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I want to look over the house.”
Greene rose with alacrity and led the way into the main lower hall—a vaulted, oak-panelled entrance containing two large carved Flemish tables of the Sambin school, against opposite walls, and several Anglo-Dutch crown-back chairs. A great Daghestan rug stretched along the parqueted floor, its faded colors repeated in the heavy draperies of the archways.
“We have, of course, just come from the drawing-room,” explained Greene, with a pompous air. “Back of it, down the hall”—he pointed past the wide marble stairway—“was the governor’s library and den—what he called his sanctum sanctorum. Nobody’s been in it for twelve years. The Mater has kept it locked up ever since the old man died. Sentiment of some kind; though I’ve often told her she ought to clean the place out and make a billiard-room of it. But you can’t move the Mater, once she’s got an idea in her head. Try it some time when you’re looking for heavy exercise.”
He walked across the hall and pulled aside the draperies of the archway opposite to the drawing-room.
“Here’s the reception-room, though we don’t use it much nowadays. Stuffy, stiff place, and the flue doesn’t draw worth a damn. Every time we’ve built a fire here, we’ve had to have the cleaners in to remove the soot from the tapestries.” He waved his cigarette-holder toward two beautiful Gobelins. “Back there, through those sliding doors, is the dining-room; and farther on are the butler’s pantry and the kitchen where one may eat off the floor. Care to inspect the culinary department?”
“No, I think not,” said Markham. “And I’ll take the kitchen floor for granted.—Now, can we look at the second floor?”
We ascended the main stairs, which led round a piece of marble statuary—a Falguière figure, I think—, and emerged into the upper hall facing the front of the house where three large close-set windows looked out over the bare trees.
The arrangement of the rooms on the second floor was simple and in keeping with the broad four-square architecture of the house; but for the sake of clarification I am embodying in this record a rough diagram of it; for it was the disposition of these rooms that made possible the carrying out of the murderer’s hideous and unnatural plot.
There were six bedrooms on the floor—three on either side of the hall, each occupied by a member of the family. At the front of the house, on our left, was the bedroom of Rex Greene, the younger brother. Next to it was the room occupied by Ada Greene; and at the rear were Mrs. Greene’s quarters, separated from Ada’s by a fair-sized dressing-room through which the two apartments communicated. It will be seen from the diagram that Mrs. Greene’s room projected beyond the main western elevation of the house, and that in the L thus formed was a small balustraded stone porch with a narrow flight of stairs, set against the house, leading to the lawn below. French doors opened upon this porch from both Ada’s and Mrs. Greene’s rooms.
PLAN OF SECOND FLOOR. (For the sake of simplification all bathrooms, clothes-closets, fireplaces, etc., have been omitted.)
On the opposite side of the hall were the three rooms occupied by Julia, Chester, and Sibella, Julia’s room being at the front of the house, Sibella’s at the rear, and Chester’s in the centre. None of these rooms communicated with the other. It might also be noted that the doors to Sibella’s and Mrs. Greene’s rooms were just behind the main staircase, whereas Chester’s and Ada’s were directly at the head of the stairs, and Julia’s and Rex’s farther toward the front of the house. There was a small linen closet between Ada’s room and Mrs. Greene’s; and at the rear of the hall were the servants’ stairs.
Chester Greene explained this arrangement to us briefly, and then walked up the hall to Julia’s room.
“You’ll want to look in here first, I imagine,” he said, throwing open the door. “Nothing’s been touched—police orders. But I can’t see what good all that stained bed-linen is to any one. It’s a frightful mess.”
The room was large and richly furnished with sage-green satin-upholstered furniture of the Marie Antoinette period. Opposite to the door was a canopied bedstead on a dais; and several dark blotches on the embroidered linen gave mute evidence of the tragedy that had been enacted there the night before.
Vance, after noting the disposition of the furniture, turned his gaze upon the old-fashioned crystal chandelier.
“Were those the lights that were on when you found your sister last night, Mr. Greene?” he asked casually.
The other nodded with surly annoyance.
“And where, may I ask, is the switch?”
“Behind the end of that cabinet.” Greene indifferently indicated a highly elaborated armoire near the door.
“Invisible—eh, what?” Vance strolled to the armoire and looked behind it. “An amazin’ burglar!” Then he went up to Markham and spoke to him in a low voice.
After a moment Markham nodded.
“Greene,” he said, “I wish you’d go to your room and lie down on the bed just as you were last night when you heard the shot. Then, when I tap on the wall, get up and do everything you did last night—in just the way you did it. I want to time you.”
PLAN OF JULIA’S BEDROOM.
The man stiffened, and gave Markham a look of resentful protestation.
“Oh, I say——!” he began. But almost at once he shrugged compliance and swaggered from the room, closing the door behind him.
Vance took out his watch, and Markham, giving Greene time to reach his room, rapped on the wall. For what seemed an interminable time we waited. Then the door opened slightly, and Greene peered round the casing. Slowly his eyes swept the room; he swung the door further ajar, stepped inside hesitantly, and moved to the bed.
“Three minutes and twenty seconds,” announced Vance. “Most disquietin’. . . . What do you imagine, Sergeant, the intruder was doing in the interim of the two shots?”
“How do I know?” retorted Heath. “Probably groping round the hall outside looking for the stairs.”
“If he’d groped that length of time he’d have fallen down ’em.”
Markham interrupted this discussion with a suggestion that we take a look at the servants’ stairway down which the butler had come after hearing the first shot.
“We needn’t inspect the other bedrooms just yet,” he added, “though we’ll want to see Miss Ada’s room as soon as the doctor thinks it’s advisable. When, by the way, will you know his decision, Greene?”
“He said he’d be here at three. And he’s a punctual beggar—a regular fiend for efficiency. He sent a nurse over early this morning, and she’s looking after Ada and the Mater now.”
“I say, Mr. Greene,” interposed Vance, “was your sister Julia in the habit of leaving her door unlocked at night?”
Greene’s jaw dropped a little, and his eyes opened wider.
“By Jove—no! Now that you mention it . . . she always locked herself in.”
Vance nodded absently, and we passed out into the hall. A thin, swinging baize door hid the servants’ stair-well at the rear, and Markham pushed it open.
“Nothing much here to deaden the sound,” he observed.
“No,” agreed Greene. “And old Sproot’s room is right at the head of the steps. He’s got good ears, too—too damned good sometimes.”
We were about to turn back, when a high-pitched querulous voice issued from the partly open door on our right.
“Is that you, Chester? What’s all this disturbance? Haven’t I had enough distraction and worry——?”
Greene had gone to his mother’s door and put his head inside.
“It’s all right, Mater,” he said irritably. “It’s only the police nosing around.”
“The police?” Her voice was contemptuous. “What do they want? Didn’t they upset me enough last night? Why don’t they go and look for the villain instead of congregating outside my door and annoying me?—So, it’s the police.” Her tone became vindictive. “Bring them in here at once, and let me talk to them. The police, indeed!”
Greene looked helplessly at Markham, who merely nodded; and we entered the invalid’s room. It was a spacious chamber, with windows on three sides, furnished elaborately with all manner of conflicting objects. My first glance took in an East Indian rug, a buhl cabinet, an enormous gilded Buddha, several massive Chinese chairs of carved teak-wood, a faded Persian tapestry, two wrought-iron standard lamps, and a red-and-gold lacquered high-boy. I looked quickly at Vance, and surprised an expression of puzzled interest in his eyes.
In an enormous bed, with neither head-piece nor foot-posts, reclined the mistress of the house, propped up in a semi-recumbent attitude on a sprawling pile of varicolored silken pillows. She must have been between sixty-five and seventy, but her hair was almost black. Her long, chevaline face, though yellowed and wrinkled like ancient parchment, still radiated an amazing vigor: it reminded me of the portraits I had seen of George Eliot. About her shoulders was drawn an embroidered Oriental shawl; and the picture she presented in the setting of that unusual and diversified room was exotic in the extreme. At her side sat a rosy-cheeked imperturbable nurse in a stiff white uniform, making a singular contrast to the woman on the bed.
