The Winter Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Another man, of unusual mien, was standing before the rear window, with a jeweller’s magnifying glass in his eye, inspecting a small object held in the palm of his hand. From pictures I had seen of him I knew he was Captain Carl Hagedorn, the most famous firearms expert in America. He was a large, cumbersome, broad-shouldered man of about fifty; and his black shiny clothes were several sizes too large for him. His coat hitched up behind, and in front hung halfway down to his knees; and his trousers were baggy and lay over his ankles in grotesquely comic folds. His head was round and abnormally large, and his ears seemed sunken into his skull. His mouth was entirely hidden by a scraggly, grey-shot moustache, all the hairs of which grew downward, forming a kind of lambrequin to his lips. Captain Hagedorn had been connected with the New York Police Department for thirty years, and though his appearance and manner were ridiculed at Headquarters, he was profoundly respected. His word on any point pertaining to firearms and gunshot wounds was accepted as final by Headquarters men.

  In the rear of the room, near the dining room door, stood two other men talking earnestly together. One was Inspector William M. Moran, Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau; the other, Sergeant Ernest Heath of the Homicide Bureau, of whom Markham had already spoken to us.

  As we entered the room in the wake of Chief Inspector O’Brien everyone ceased his occupation for a moment and looked at the District Attorney in a spirit of uneasy, but respectful, recognition. Only Captain Hagedorn, after a cursory squint at Markham, returned to the inspection of the tiny object in his hand, with an abstracted unconcern which brought a faint smile to Vance’s lips.

  Inspector Moran and Sergeant Heath came forward with stolid dignity; and after the ceremony of handshaking (which I later observed to be a kind of religious rite among the police and the members of the District Attorney’s staff), Markham introduced Vance and me and briefly explained our presence. The inspector bowed pleasantly to indicate his acceptance of the intrusion, but I noticed that Heath ignored Markham’s explanation and proceeded to treat us as if we were nonexistent.

  Inspector Moran was a man of different quality from the others in the room. He was about sixty, with white hair and a brown moustache, and was immaculately dressed. He looked more like a successful Wall Street broker of the better class than a police official.*

  “I’ve assigned Sergeant Heath to the case, Mr. Markham,” he explained in a low, well-modulated voice. “It looks as though we are in for a bit of trouble before it’s finished. Even the Chief Inspector thought it warranted his lending the moral support of his presence to the preliminary rounds. He has been here since eight o’clock.”

  Inspector O’Brien had left us immediately upon entering the room, and now stood between the front windows, watching the proceedings with a grave, indecipherable face.

  “Well, I think I’ll be going,” Moran added. “They had me out of bed at seven-thirty, and I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I won’t be needed anyway now that you’re here… Good morning.” And again he shook hands.

  When he had gone, Markham turned to the Assistant District Attorney.

  “Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in the wood and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to them while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”

  Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up excitement.

  As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard Heath say in a sullen voice:

  “I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”

  Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office.

  Markham looked at Heath with a slow, gracious smile and shook his head.

  “No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want that relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if Major Benson hadn’t ’phoned me and asked me to lend a hand. And I particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty generally known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the Major is an old friend of mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with the case is kept quiet.”

  Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had, in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he personally liked the District Attorney.

  “If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the Police Department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to see the reporters… And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly, “if there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that, too.”

  “Fair enough,” assented Heath.

  “And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.

  * The book was O. Henry’s Strictly Business, and the place at which it was being held open was, curiously enough, the story entitled “A Municipal Report.”

  * Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of a large upstate bank that had failed during the panic of1907, and during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the post of Police Commissioner.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Lady’s Hand-Bag

  (Friday, June 14; 9.30 a.m.)

  THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY and Heath walked up to the body, and stood regarding it.

  “You see,” Heath explained; “he was shot directly from the front. A pretty powerful shot, too, for the bullet passed through the head and struck the woodwork over there by the window.” He pointed to a place on the wainscot a short distance from the floor near the drapery of the window nearest the hallway. “We found the expelled shell, and Captain Hagedorn’s got the bullet.”

  He turned to the firearms expert.

  “How about it, Captain? Anything special?”

  Hagedorn raised his head slowly and gave Heath a myopic frown. Then, after a few awkward movements, he answered with unhurried precision:

  “A forty-five army bullet—Colt automatic.”

  “Any idea how close to Benson the gun was held?” asked Markham.

  “Yes, sir, I have,” Hagedorn replied, in his ponderous monotone. “Between five and six feet—probably.”

  Heath snorted.

  “ ‘Probably,’” he repeated to Markham with good-natured contempt. “You can bank on it if the Captain says so… You see, sir, nothing smaller than a forty-four or forty-five will stop a man, and these steel-capped army bullets go through a human skull like it was cheese. But in order to carry straight to the woodwork the gun had to be held pretty close; and as there aren’t any powder marks on the face, it’s a safe bet to take the Captain’s figures as to distance.”

  At this point we heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner, accompanied by his assistant, bustled in. He shook hands with Markham and Inspector O’Brien, and gave Heath a friendly salutation.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he apologized.

  He was a nervous man with a heavily seamed face and the manner of a real estate salesman.

  “What have we got here?” he asked, in the same breath, making a wry face at the body in the chair.

  “You tell us, Doc,” retorted Heath.

  Dr. Doremus approached the murdered man with a callous indifference indicative of a long process of hardening. He first inspected the face closely—he was, I imagine, looking for powder marks. Then he glanced at the bullet hole in the forehead and at the ragged wound in the back of the head. Next he moved the dead man’s arm, bent the fingers, and pushed the head a little to the side. Having satisfied himself as to the state of rigor mortis, he turned to Heath.

  “Can we get him on the settee there?”

  Heath looked at Markham
inquiringly.

  “All through, sir?”

  Markham nodded, and Heath beckoned to the two men at the front windows and ordered the body placed on the davenport. It retained its sitting posture, due to the hardening of the muscles after death, until the doctor and his assistant straightened out the limbs. The body was then undressed, and Dr. Doremus examined it carefully for other wounds. He paid particular attention to the arms; and he opened both hands wide and scrutinized the palms. At length he straightened up and wiped his hands on a large colored silk handkerchief.

  “Shot through the left frontal,” he announced. “Direct angle of fire. Bullet passed completely through the skull. Exit wound in the left occipital region—base of skull—you found the bullet, didn’t you? He was awake when shot, and death was immediate—probably never knew what hit him… He’s been dead about—well, I should judge, eight hours; maybe longer.”

  “How about twelve-thirty for the exact time?” asked Heath.

  The doctor looked at his watch.

  “Fits O.K…. Anything else?”

  No one answered, and after a slight pause the Chief Inspector spoke.

  “We’d like a postmortem report today, Doctor.”

  “That’ll be all right,” Dr. Doremus answered, snapping shut his medical case and handing it to his assistant. “But get the body to the Mortuary as soon as you can.”

  After a brief handshaking ceremony, he went out hurriedly.

  Heath turned to the detective who had been standing by the table when we entered.

  “Burke, you ’phone Headquarters to call for the body—and tell ’em to get a move on. Then go back to the office and wait for me.”

  Burke saluted and disappeared.

  Heath then addressed one of the two men who had been inspecting the grilles of the front windows.

  “How about that ironwork, Snitkin?”

  “No chance, Sergeant,” was the answer. “Strong as a jail—both of ’em. Nobody never got in through those windows.”

  “Very good,” Heath told him. “Now you two fellows chase along with Burke.”

  When they had gone, the dapper man in the blue serge suit and derby, whose sphere of activity had seemed to be the fireplace, laid two cigarette butts on the table.

  “I found these under the gas logs, Sergeant,” he explained unenthusiastically. “Not much, but there’s nothing else laying around.”

  “All right, Emery.” Heath gave the butts a disgruntled look. “You needn’t wait, either. I’ll see you at the office later.”

  Hagedorn came ponderously forward.

  “I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to keep this bullet a while. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it. You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”

  Heath smiled tolerantly.

  “What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose it.”

  “I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and, without so much as a glance at either the District Attorney or the Chief Inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.

  Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,” “impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had prompted this strange interrogation.

  As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien entered the hall.

  “Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then, without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you down town.”

  Markham heard him.

  “Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”

  “Plenty, Mr. Markham.”

  The three of them went out.

  Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining room door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.

  I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.*

  At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and down the hall.

  The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket, and joined Dinwiddie and me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain Hagedorn.

  The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door.

  “There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him in?”

  Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on recognizing the District Attorney, made Markham the recipient of his report.

  “I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around midnight, I guess it was, there was a big grey Cadillac standing in front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of fishing tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on. When I heard of the crime this morning, I reported the car to the station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”

  “Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the matter to Heath.

  “May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long would you say the car was here, officer?”

  “A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come back at twelve-thirty or thereabouts, it was still here. But the next time I come by, it was gone.”

  “You saw nothing else? Nobody in the car, or anyone hanging around who might have been the owner?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  Several other questions of a similar nature were asked him; but nothing more could be learned, and he was dismissed.

  “Anyway,” remarked Heath, “the car story will be good stuff to hand the reporters.”

  Vance had sat through the questioning of McLaughlin with drowsy inattention—I doubt if he even heard more than the first few words of the officer’s report—and now, with a stifled yawn, he rose and, sauntering to the center table, picked up one of the cigarette butts that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutin
izing the tip, he ripped the paper open with his thumbnail and held the exposed tobacco to his nose.

  Heath, who had been watching him gloweringly, leaned suddenly forward in his chair.

  “What are you doing there?” he demanded, in a tone of surly truculence.

  Vance lifted his eyes in decorous astonishment.

  “Merely smelling of the tobacco,” he replied, with condescending unconcern. “It’s rather mild, y’ know, but delicately blended.”

  The muscles in Heath’s cheeks worked angrily. “Well, you’d better put it down, sir,” he advised. Then he looked Vance up and down. “Tobacco expert?” he asked, with ill-disguised sarcasm.

  “Oh, dear no.” Vance’s voice was dulcet. “My specialty is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties.”

  Markham interposed diplomatically.

  “You really shouldn’t touch anything around here, Vance, at this stage of the game. You never know what’ll turn out to be important. Those cigarette stubs may quite possibly be significant evidence.”

  “Evidence?” repeated Vance sweetly. “My word! You don’t say, really! Most amusin’!”

  Markham was plainly annoyed; and Heath was boiling inwardly but made no further comment: he even forced a mirthless smile. He evidently felt that he had been a little too abrupt with this friend of the District Attorney’s, however much the friend might have deserved being reprimanded.

  Heath, however, was no sycophant in the presence of his superiors. He knew his worth and lived up to it with his whole energy, discharging the tasks to which he was assigned with a dogged indifference to his own political well-being. This stubbornness of spirit, and the solidity of character it implied, were respected and valued by the men over him.

  He was a large, powerful man but agile and graceful in his movements, like a highly trained boxer. He had hard blue eyes, remarkably bright and penetrating, a small nose, a broad, oval chin, and a stern, straight mouth with lips that appeared always compressed. His hair, which, though he was well along in his forties, was without a trace of greyness, was cropped about the edges and stood upright in a short bristly pompadour. His voice had an aggressive resonance, but he rarely blustered. In many ways he accorded with the conventional notion of what a detective is like. But there was something more to the man’s personality, an added capability and strength, as it were; and as I sat watching him that morning I felt myself unconsciously admiring him, despite his very obvious limitations.