The Garden Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “That’s right,” nodded the other. “But what are you trying to get at, Vance? What’s the vault to do with poor Woody’s death?”

  “I’m not sure,” returned Vance slowly, rising and going again to the window. “I wish I knew. I’m merely tryin’ not to overlook any possibility.”

  “Your line of inquiry sounds pretty far-fetched to me,” Garden commented indifferently.

  “One never knows, does one?” Vance murmured, going to the door. “Miss Beeton,” he called, “will you be good enough to run upstairs and see if the key to the vault door is in its place?”

  A few moments later the nurse returned and informed Vance that the key was where it was always kept. Vance thanked her and, closing the den door, turned again to Garden.

  “There’s one more rather important matter that you can clear up for me—it may have a definite bearing on the situation.” He sat down in a low green leather chair and took out his cigarette case. “Can the garden be entered from the fire exit opening on the roof?”

  “Yes, by George!” The other sat up with alacrity. “There’s a gate in the east fence of the garden, just beside the privet hedge, which leads upon the terrace on which the fire exit of the building opens. When we had the fence built we were required to put this gate in because of the fire laws. But it’s rarely used, except on hot summer nights. Still, if anyone came up the main stairs to the roof and went out the emergency fire door, he could easily enter our garden by coming through that gate in the fence.”

  “Don’t you keep the gate locked?” Vance was studying the tip of his cigarette with close attention.

  “The fire regulations don’t permit that. We merely have an old-fashioned barn-door lift-latch on it.”

  “That’s most interestin’,” Vance commented in a low voice. “Then, as I understand it, anyone coming up the main stairway could walk out through the fire exit to the terrace, and enter your garden. And, of course, return the same way.”

  “That’s true.” Garden narrowed his eyes questioningly. “Do you really think that someone may have entered the garden that way and popped poor Woody off while we were all down here?”

  “I’m doing dashed little thinking at the present moment,” Vance answered evasively. “I’m trying to gether some material to think about, don’t y’ know…”

  We could hear the sharp ringing of the entrance bell, and a door opening somewhere. Vance stepped out into the hall. A moment later the butler admitted District Attorney Markham and Sergeant Heath, accompanied by Snitkin and Hennessey.*

  Note

  * Snitkin and Hennessey were two detectives of the Homicide Bureau, who had worked as associates of Sergeant Heath on the various criminal cases with which Vance had previously been connected.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Evidence of Murder

  (Saturday, April 14; 5:10 p. m.)

  “WELL, WHAT’S THE trouble, Vance?” Markham demanded brusquely. “I phoned Heath, as you requested, and brought him up with me.”

  “It’s a bad business,” Vance returned. “Same like I told you. I’m afraid you’re in for some difficulties. It’s no ordin’ry crime. Everything I’ve been able to learn so far contradicts everything else.” He looked past Markham and nodded pleasantly to Heath. “Sorry to make you all this trouble, Sergeant.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Vance.” Heath held out his hand in solemn good nature. “Glad I was in when the Chief called. What’s it all about, and where do we go from here?…”

  Mrs. Garden came bustling energetically down the hallway.

  “Are you the District Attorney?” she asked, eyeing Markham ferociously. Without waiting for an answer, she went on: “This whole thing is an outrage. My poor nephew shot himself and this gentleman here”—she looked at Vance with supreme contempt—“is trying to make a scandal out of it.” Her eyes swept over Heath and the two detectives. “And I suppose you’re the police. There’s no reason whatever for your being here.”

  Markham looked steadfastly at the woman and seemed to take in the situation immediately.

  “Madam, if things are as you say,” he promised in a pacifying, yet grave, tone, “you need have no fear of any scandal.”

  “I’ll leave the matter entirely in your hands, sir,” the woman returned with calm dignity. “I shall be in the drawing room, and I trust you will notify me the moment you have done what is necessary.” She turned and walked back up the hall.

  “A most tryin’ and complicated state of affairs, Markham.” Vance took the matter up again. “I admit the chap upstairs appears to have killed himself. But that, I think, is what everyone is supposed to believe. Tableau superficially correct. Stage direction and décor fairly good. But the whole far from perfect. I observed several discrepancies. As a matter of fact, the chap did not kill himself. And there are several people here who should be questioned later. They’re all in the drawing room now—except Floyd Garden.”

  Garden, who had been standing in the doorway to the den, came forward, and Vance introduced him to Markham and Heath. Then Vance turned to the Sergeant.

  “I think you’d better have either Snitkin or Hennessey remain down here and see that no one leaves the apartment for a little while.” He addressed Garden. “I hope you won’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Garden replied complacently. “I’ll join the others in the drawing room. I feel the need of a highball, anyway.” He included us all in a curt bow and moved up the hall.

  “We’d better go up to the roof now, Markham,” said Vance. “I’ll run over the whole matter with you. There are some strange angles to the case. I don’t at all like it. Rather sorry I came today. It might have passed for a nice refined suicide, with no bother or suspicion—everyone smugly relieved. But here I am. However…”

  He moved down the hall, and Markham and Heath and I followed him. But before he mounted the stairs he stopped and turned to the nurse.

  “You needn’t keep watch here any longer, Miss Beeton,” he said. “And thanks for your help. But one more favor: when the Medical Examiner comes, please bring him directly upstairs.”

  The girl inclined her head in acquiescence and stepped into the bedroom.

  We went immediately up to the garden. As we stepped out on the roof, Vance indicated the body of Swift slumped in the chair.

  “There’s the johnnie,” he said. “Just as he was found.”

  Markham and Heath moved closer to the huddled figure and studied it for a few moments. At length Heath looked up with a perplexed frown.

  “Well, Mr. Vance,” he announced querulously, “it looks like suicide, all right.” He shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  Markham too turned to Vance. He nodded his agreement with the Sergeant’s observation.

  “It certainly has the appearance of suicide, Vance,” he remarked.

  “No—oh, no,” Vance sighed. “Not suicide. A deuced brutal crime—and clever no end.”

  Markham smoked a while, still staring at the dead man skeptically; then he sat down facing Vance.

  “Let’s have the whole story before Doremus* gets here,” he requested, with marked irritation.

  Vance remained standing, his eyes moving aimlessly about the garden. After a moment he recounted succinctly, but carefully, the entire sequence of events of the afternoon, describing the group of people present, with their relationships and temperamental clashes; the various races and wagers; Swift’s retirement to the garden for the results of the big Handicap; and, finally, the shot which had aroused us all and brought us upstairs. When he had finished, Markham worried his chin for a moment.

  “I still can’t see a single fact,” he objected, “that does not point logically to suicide.”

  Vance leaned against the wall beside the study window and lighted a Régie.

  “Of course,” he said, “there’s nothing in the outline I’ve given you to indicate murder. Nevertheless, it was murder; and that outline is exactly the concatenation of events
which the murderer wants us to accept. We are supposed to arrive at the obvious conclusion of suicide. Suicide as the result of losing money on horses is by no means a rare occurrence, and only recently there has been an account of such a suicide in the papers.* It is not impossible that the murderer’s scheme was influenced by this account. But there are other factors, psychological and actual, which belie this whole superficial and deceptive structure.” He drew on his cigarette and watched the thin blue ribbon of smoke disperse in the light breeze from the river. “To begin with,” he went on, “Swift was not the suicidal type. A trite observation—and one that is often untrue. But there can be little doubt of its truth in the present instance, despite the fact that young Garden has taken pains to convince me to the contr’ry. In the first place, Swift was a weakling and a highly imaginative one. Moreover, he was too hopeful and ambitious—too sure of his own judgment and good luck—to put himself out of the world simply because he had lost all his money. The fact that Equanimity might not win the race was an eventuality which, as a confirmed gambler, he would have taken into consideration before hand. In addition, his nature was such that, if he were greatly disappointed, the result would be self-pity and hatred of others. He might, in an emergency, have committed a crime—but it would not have been against himself. Like all gamblers, he was trusting and gullible; and I think it was these temperamental qualities which probably made him an easy victim for the murderer…”

  “But see here, Vance.” Markham leaned forward protestingly. “No amount of mere psychological analysis can make a crime out of a situation as seemingly obvious as this one. After all, this is a practical world; and I happen to be a member of a practical profession. I must have more definite reasons than you have given me before I would be justified in discarding the theory of suicide.”

  “Oh, I dare say,” nodded Vance. “But I have more tangible evidence that the johnnie did not eliminate himself from this life. However, the psychological implications of the man’s nature—the contradictions, so to speak, between his character and the present situation—were what led me in the first place to look for more specific and demonstrable evidence that he was not unassisted in his demise.”

  “Well, let’s have it.” Markham fidgeted impatiently in his chair.

  “Imprimis, my dear Justinian, a bullet wound in the temple would undoubtedly cause more blood than you see on the brow of the deceased. There are, as you notice, only a few partly coagulated drops, whereas the vessels of the brain cannot be punctured without a considerable flow of blood. And there is no blood either on his clothes or on the tiles beneath his chair. Meanin’ that the blood had been, perhaps, spilled elsewhere before I arrived on the scene—which was, let us say, within thirty seconds after we heard the shot—”

  “But good Heavens, man!—”

  “Yes, yes; I know what you’re going to say. And my answer is that the gentleman did not receive the bullet in his temple as he sat in yonder chair with the headphone on. He was shot elsewhere and brought here.”

  “A far-fetched theory,” muttered Markham. “All wounds don’t bleed the same.”

  Vance ignored the District Attorney’s objection.

  “And please take a good look at the poor fellow as he sits there, freed from all the horrors of the struggle for existence. His legs are stretched forward at an awkward angle. The trousers are twisted out of place and look most uncomfortable. His coat, though buttoned, is riding his shoulders, so that his collar is at least three inches above his exquisite mauve shirt. No man could endure to have his clothes so outrageously askew, even on the point of suicide—he would have straightened them out almost unconsciously. The corpus delicti shows every indication of having been dragged to the chair and placed in it.”

  Markham’s eyes were surveying the limp figure of Swift as Vance talked.

  “Even that argument is not entirely convincing,” he said dogmatically, though his tone was a bit modified; “especially in view of the fact that he still wears the earphone…”

  “Ah, exactly!” Vance took him up quickly. “That’s another item to which I would call your attention. The murderer went a bit too far—there was a trifle too much thoroughness in the setting of the stage. Had Swift shot himself in that chair, I believe his first impulsive movement would have been to remove the headphone, as it very easily could have interfered with his purpose. And it certainly would have been of no use to him after he had heard the report of the race. Furthermore, I seriously doubt if he would have come upstairs to listen to the race with his mind made up in advance that he was going to commit suicide in case his horse didn’t come in. And, as I have explained to you, the revolver is one belonging to Professor Garden and was always kept in the desk in the study. Consequently, if Swift had decided, after the race had been run, to shoot himself, he would hardly have gone into the study, procured the gun, then come back to his chair on the roof and put the headphone on again, before ending his life. Undoubtedly he would have shot himself right there in the study—at the desk from which he had obtained the revolver.”

  Vance moved forward a little as if for emphasis.

  “Another point about that headphone—the point that gave me the first hint of murder—is the fact that the receiver at present is over Swift’s right ear. Earlier today I saw Swift put the headphone on for a minute, and he was careful to place the receiver over his left ear—the custom’ry way. The telephone receiver, d’ ye see, Markham, has always been placed on the left side of the phone box, in order to leave the right hand free to make notations or for other emergencies. The result is, the left ear has adapted itself to hearing more distinctly over the wire than the right ear. And humanity, as a result, has accustomed itself to holding a telephone receiver to the left ear. Swift was merely conforming to custom and instinct when he placed the receiving end of the headphone on the left side of his head. But now the headphone is on in reversed position, and therefore unnatural. I’m certain, Markham, that headphone was placed on Swift after he was dead.”

  Markham meditated on this for several moments.

  “Still, Vance,” he said at length, “reasonable objections could be raised to all the points you have brought up. They are based almost entirely on the theory and not on demonstrable facts.”

  “From a legal point of view, you’re right,” Vance conceded. “And if these had been my only reasons for believing that a crime had been committed, I wouldn’t have summoned you and the doughty Sergeant. But, even so, Markham, I can assure you the few drops of blood you see on the chappie’s temple could not have thickened to the extent they had when I first saw the body—they must have been exposed to the air for several minutes. And, as I say, I was up here approximately thirty seconds after we heard the shot.”

  “But that being the case,” returned Markham in astonishment, “how can you possibly explain the fact?”

  Vance straightened a little and looked at the District Attorney with unwonted gravity.

  “Swift,” he said, “was not killed by the shot we heard.”

  “That don’t make sense to me, Mr. Vance,” Heath interposed, scowling.

  “Just a moment, Sergeant.” Vance nodded to him in friendly fashion. “When I realized that the shot that wiped out this johnnie’s existence was not the shot that we had heard, I tried to figure out where the fatal shot could have been fired without our hearing it below. And I’ve found the place. It was in a vault-like storeroom—practically soundproof, I should say—on the other side of the passageway that leads to the study. I found the door unlocked and looked for evidence of some activity there…”

  Markham had risen and taken a few nervous steps around the pool in the center of the roof.

  “Did you find any evidence,” he asked, “to corroborate your theory?”

  “Yes—unmistakable evidence.” Vance walked over to the still figure in the chair and pointed to the thick-lensed glasses tipped forward on the nose. “To begin with, Markham, you will notice that Swift’s glasses are in a
position far from normal, indicatin’ that they were put on hurriedly and inaccurately by someone else—just as was the headphone.”

  Markham and Heath leaned over and peered at the glasses.

  “Well, Mr. Vance,” agreed the Sergeant, “they certainly don’t look as if he had put ’em on himself.”

  Markham straightened up, compressed his lips, and nodded slowly.

  “All right,” he said; “what else?”

  “Perpend, Markham.” Vance pointed with his cigarette. “The left lens of the glasses—the one furthest from the punctured temple—is cracked at the corner, and there’s a very small V-shaped piece missing where the crack begins—an indication that the glasses have been dropped and nicked. I can assure you that the lens was neither cracked nor nicked when I last saw Swift alive.”

  “Couldn’t he have dropped his glasses on the roof here?” asked Heath.

  “Possible, of course, sergeant,” Vance returned. “But he didn’t. I carefully looked over the tiles round the chair, and the missin’ bit of glass was not there.”

  Markham looked at Vance shrewdly.

  “And perhaps you know where it is.”

  “Yes—oh, yes.” Vance nodded. “That’s why I urged you to come here. That piece of glass is at present in my waistcoat pocket.”

  Markham showed a new interest.

  “Where did you find it?” he demanded brusquely.

  “I found it,” Vance told him, “on the tiled floor in the vault across the hall. And it was near some scattered papers which could easily have been knocked to the floor by someone falling against them.”

  Markham’s eyes opened incredulously, and he turned and studied the dead man again meditatively. At length he took a deep breath and pursed his lips.

  “I’m beginning to see why you wanted me and the Sergeant here,” he said slowly. “But what I don’t understand, Vance, is that second shot that you heard. How do you account for it?”

  Vance drew deeply on his cigarette.