The Bishop Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Yes, sir. At about ten o’clock.”

  “Did you see them again or overhear any of their remarks while they waited here in the drawing room?”

  “No, sir. I was busy in Mr. Arnesson’s quarters most of the morning.”

  “Ah!” Vance turned his eyes on the man. “That would be on the second floor rear, wouldn’t it?—the room with the balcony?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Most interestin’… And it was from that balcony that Professor Dillard first saw Mr. Robin’s body.—How could he have entered the room without your knowing it? You said, I believe, that your first intimation of the tragedy was when the professor called you from the library and told you to seek Mr. Sperling.”

  The butler’s face turned a pasty white, and I noticed that his fingers twitched nervously.

  “I might have stepped out of Mr. Arnesson’s room for a moment,” he explained with effort. “Yes—it’s quite likely. In fact, sir, I recall going to the linen closet… ”

  “Oh, to be sure.” Vance lapsed into lethargy.

  Markham smoked awhile, his gaze concentrated on the tabletop. “Did anyone else call at the house this morning, Pyne?” he asked presently.

  “No one, sir.”

  “And you can suggest no explanation for what happened here?”

  The man shook his head heavily, his watery eyes in space.

  “No, sir. Mr. Robin seemed a pleasant, well-liked young man. He wasn’t the kind to inspire murder—if you understand what I mean.”

  Vance looked up. “I can’t say that I, personally, understand exactly what you mean, Pyne. How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I don’t, sir,” was the unperturbed answer. “But I know a bit about archery—if you’ll pardon my saying so—and I saw right away that Mr. Robin had been killed by a hunting arrow.”

  “You’re very observin’, Pyne,” nodded Vance. “And quite correct.”

  It was plain that no direct information was to be got from the butler, and Markham dismissed him abruptly, at the same time ordering Heath to send in the cook.

  When she entered, I noticed at once a resemblance between father and daughter. She was a slatternly woman of about forty, also tall and angular, with a thin, elongated face and large hands and feet. Hyperpituitarism evidently ran in the Pyne family.

  A few preliminary questions brought out the information that she was a widow, named Beedle, and had at the death of her husband five years before, come to Professor Dillard as the result of Pyne’s recommendation.

  “What time did you leave the house this morning, Beedle?” Markham asked her.

  “Right after half past ten.” She seemed uneasy and on the alert, and her voice was defensively belligerent.

  “And what time did you return?”

  “About half past twelve. That man let me in”—she looked viciously at Heath—“and treated me like I’d been a criminal.”

  Heath grinned. “The time’s okay, Mr. Markham. She got sore because I wouldn’t let her go downstairs.”

  Markham nodded noncommittally. “Do you know anything of what took place here this morning?” he went on, studying the woman closely.

  “How should I know? I was at Jefferson market.”

  “Did you see either Mr. Robin or Mr. Sperling?”

  “They went downstairs to the archery room past the kitchen a little while before I went out.”

  “Did you overhear anything they said?”

  “I don’t listen at keyholes.”

  Markham set his jaw angrily and was about to speak when Vance addressed the woman suavely.

  “The district attorney thought that perhaps the door was open and that you might have overheard some of their conversation despite your commendable effort not to listen.”

  “The door might’ve been open, but I didn’t hear anything,” she answered sullenly.

  “Then, you couldn’t tell us if there was anyone else in the archery room.”

  Beedle narrowed her eyes and gave Vance a calculating look. “Maybe there was someone else,” she said slowly. “In fact, I thought I heard Mr. Drukker.” A note of venom came into her voice, and the shadow of a hard smile passed over her thin lips. “He was here to call on Mr. Arnesson early this morning.”

  “Oh, was he, now?” Vance appeared surprised at this news. “You saw him perhaps?”

  “I saw him come in, but I didn’t see him go out—anyway, I didn’t notice. He sneaks in and out at all hours.”

  “Sneaks, eh? Fancy that!… By the by, which door did you use when you went a-marketing?”

  “The front door. Since Miss Belle made a clubroom out of the basement, I always use the front door.”

  “Then, you didn’t enter the archery room this morning?”

  “No.”

  Vance raised himself in his chair. “Thanks for your help, Beedle. We won’t need you anymore now.”

  When the woman had left us, Vance rose and walked to the window.

  “We’re expending too much zeal in irrelevant channels, Markham,” he said. “We’ll never get anywhere by ballyragging servants and questioning members of the household. There’s a psychological wall to be battered down before we can begin storming the enemy’s trenches. Everybody in this ménage has some pet privacy that he’s afraid will leak out. Each person so far has told us either less or more than he knows. Disheartenin’, but true. Nothing that we’ve learned dovetails with anything else; and when chronological events don’t fit together, you may rest assured that the serrated points of contact have been deliberately distorted. I haven’t found one clean joinder in all the tales that have been poured into our ears.”

  “It’s more likely the connections are missing,” Markham argued; “and we’ll never find them if we don’t pursue our questionings.”

  “You’re much too trustin’.” Vance walked back to the center table. “The more questions we ask, the farther afield we’ll be taken. Even Professor Dillard didn’t give us a wholly honest account. There’s something he’s keeping back—some suspicion he won’t voice. Why did he bring that bow indoors? Arnesson put his finger on a vital spot when he asked the same question. Shrewd fella, Arnesson.—Then there’s our athletic young lady with the muscular calves. She’s entangled in various amat’ry meshes, and is endeavoring to extricate herself and her whole coterie without leaving a blemish on anyone. A praiseworthy aim but not one conducive to the unadulterated truth.—Pyne has ideas, too. That flabby facial mask of his curtains many an entrancin’ thought. But we’ll never probe his cortex by chivyin’ him with questions. Somethin’ rum, too, about his matutinal labors. He says he was in Arnesson’s room all morning; but he obviously didn’t know that the professor took a sunnin’ on Arnesson’s verandah. And that linen-closet alibi—much too specious.—Also, Markham, let your mind flutter about the widowed Beedle’s tale. She doesn’t like the oversociable Mr. Drukker; and when she saw a chance to involve him, she did so. She ‘thought’ she heard his voice in the archery room. But did she? Who knows? True, he might have tarried among the slings and javelins on his way home and been joined later by Robin and Sperling… Yes, it’s a point we must investigate. In fact, a bit of polite converse with Mr. Drukker is strongly indicated… ”

  Footsteps were heard descending the front stairs, and Arnesson appeared in the archway of the living room.

  “Well, who killed Cock Robin?” he asked with a satyrlike grin.

  Markham rose, annoyed, and was about to protest at the intrusion; but Arnesson held up his hand.

  “One moment, please. I’m here to offer my exalted services in the noble cause of justice—mundane justice, I would have you understand. Philosophically, of course, there’s no such thing as justice. If there really were justice, we’d all be in for a shingling in the cosmic woodshed.” He sat down facing Markham and chuckled cynically. “The fact is, the sad and precipitate departure of Mr. Robin appeals to my scientific nature. It makes a nice, orderly problem. It has a decidedly mathe
matical flavor—no undistributed terms, you understand; clear-cut integers with certain unknown quantities to be determined.—Well, I’m the genius to solve it.”

  “What would be your solution, Arnesson?” Markham knew and respected the man’s intelligence, and seemed at once to sense a serious purpose beneath his attitude of sneering flippancy.

  “Ah! As yet I haven’t tackled the equation.” Arnesson drew out an old briar pipe and fingered it affectionately. “But I’ve always wanted to do a little detective work on a purely earthly plane—the insatiable curiosity and natural inquisitiveness of the physicist, you understand. And I’ve long had a theory that the science of mathematics can be advantageously applied to the trivialities of our life on this unimportant planet. There’s nothing but law in the universe—unless Eddington is right and there’s no law at all—and I see no sufficient reason why the identity and position of a criminal can’t be determined just as Leverrier calculated the mass and ephemeris of Neptune from the observed deviations in the orbit of Uranus. You remember how, after his computations, he told Galle, the Berlin astronomer, to look for the planet in a specified longitude of the ecliptic.”

  Arnesson paused and filled his pipe.

  “Now, Mr. Markham,” he went on; and I tried to decide whether or not the man was in earnest, “I’d like the opportunity of applying to this absurd muddle the purely rational means used by Leverrier in discovering Neptune. But I’ve got to have the data on the perturbations of Uranus’s orbit, so to speak—that is, I must know all the varying factors in the equation. The favor I’ve come here to ask is that you take me into your confidence and tell me all the facts. A sort of intellectual partnership. I’ll figure out this problem for you along scientific lines. It’ll be bully sport; and incidentally I’d like to prove my theory that mathematics is the basis of all truth however far removed from scholastic abstractions.” He at last got his pipe going, and sank back in his chair. “Is it a bargain?”

  “I’ll be glad to tell you whatever we know, Arnesson,” Markham replied after a brief pause. “But I can’t promise to reveal everything that may arise from now on. It might work against the ends of justice and embarrass our investigation.”

  Vance had sat with half-closed eyes, apparently bored by Arnesson’s astonishing request; but now he turned to Markham with a considerable show of animation.

  “I say, y’ know; there’s really no reason why we shouldn’t give Mr. Arnesson a chance to translate this crime into the realm of applied mathematics. I’m sure he’d be discreet and use our information only for scientific purposes. And—one never knows, does one?—we may need his highly trained assistance before we’re through with this fascinatin’ affair.”

  Markham knew Vance well enough to realize that his suggestion had not been made thoughtlessly; and I was in no wise astonished when he faced Arnesson and said, “Very well, then. We’ll give you whatever data you need to work out your mathematical formula. Anything special you want to know now?”

  “Oh, no. I know the details thus far as well as you, and I’ll strip Beedle and old Pyne of their contributions when you’re gone. But if I solve this problem and determine the exact position of the criminal, don’t pigeonhole my findings as Sir George Airy did those of poor Adams when he submitted his Neptunean calculations prior to Leverrier’s… ”

  At this moment the front door opened, and the uniformed officer stationed on the porch came in, followed by a stranger.

  “This gent here says he wants to see the professor,” he announced with radiating suspicion; and, turning to the man, he indicated Markham with a gesture of the head. “That’s the district attorney. Tell him your troubles.”

  The newcomer seemed somewhat embarrassed. He was a slender, well-groomed man with an unmistakable air of refinement. His age, I should say, was fifty, though his face held a perennially youthful look. His hair was thin and graying, his nose a trifle sharp, and his chin small but in no way weak. His eyes, surmounted by a high broad forehead, were his most striking characteristic. They were the eyes of a disappointed and disillusioned dreamer—half sad, half resentful, as if life had tricked him and left him unhappy and bitter.

  He was about to address Markham when he caught sight of Arnesson.

  “Oh, good morning, Arnesson,” he said in a quiet, well-modulated voice. “I hope there’s nothing seriously wrong.”

  “A mere death, Pardee,” the other replied carelessly. “The proverbial tempest in a teapot.”

  Markham was annoyed at the interruption. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked.

  “I trust I am not intruding,” the man apologized. “I am a friend of the family—I live just across the street; and I perceived that something unusual had happened here. It occurred to me I might be of some service.”

  Arnesson chuckled. “My dear Pardee! Why clothe your natural curiosity in the habiliments of rhetoric?”

  Pardee blushed. “I assure you, Arnesson—” he began; but Vance interrupted him.

  “You say you live opposite, Mr. Pardee. You have perhaps been observing this house during the forenoon?”

  “Hardly that, sir. My study, however, overlooks 75th Street, and it’s true I was sitting at the window most of the morning. But I was busy writing. When I returned to my work from lunch, I noticed the crowd and the police cars and also the officer in uniform at the door.”

  Vance had been studying him from the corner of his eye. “Did you happen to see anyone enter or leave this house this morning, Mr. Pardee?” he asked.

  The man shook his head slowly.

  “No one in particular. I noticed two young men—friends of Miss Dillard—call at about ten o’clock, and I saw Beedle go out with her market basket. But that’s all I recall.”

  “Did you see either of these young men depart?”

  “I don’t remember.” Pardee knit his brows. “And yet it seems to me one of them left by the range gate. But it’s only an impression.”

  “What time would that have been?”

  “Really, I couldn’t say. Perhaps an hour or so after his arrival. I wouldn’t care to be more specific.”

  “You recall no other person whatever either coming or going from the house this morning?”

  “I saw Miss Dillard return from the tennis courts about half past twelve, just as I was called to lunch. In fact, she waved her racket to me.”

  “And no one else?”

  “I’m afraid not.” There was unmistakable regret in his quiet response.

  “One of the young men you saw enter here has been killed,” Vance told him.

  “Mr. Robin —alias Cock Robin,” supplemented Arnesson, with a comic grimace which affected me unpleasantly.

  “Good Heavens! How unfortunate!” Pardee appeared genuinely shocked. “Robin? Wasn’t he the champion archer of Belle’s club?”

  “His one claim to immortality.—That’s the chap.”

  “Poor Belle!” Something in the man’s manner caused Vance to regard him sharply. “I hope she’s not too greatly upset by the tragedy.”

  “She’s dramatizing it, naturally,” Arnesson returned. “So are the police, for that matter. Awful pother about nothing in particular. The earth is covered with ‘small crawling masses of impure carbohydrates’ like Robin—referred to in the aggregate as humanity.”

  Pardee smiled with tolerant sadness,—he was obviously familiar with Arnesson’s cynicisms. Then he appealed to Markham.

  “May I be permitted to see Miss Dillard and her uncle?”

  “Oh, by all means.” It was Vance who answered before Markham could reach a decision. “You’ll find them in the library, Mr. Pardee.”

  The man left the room with a polite murmur of thanks.

  “Queer fellow,” commented Arnesson when Pardee was out of hearing. “Cursed with money. Leads an indolent life. His one passion is solving chess problems… ”

  “Chess?” Vance looked up with interest. “Is he, by any chance, John Pardee, the inventor of the famous Pardee ga
mbit?”

  “The same.” Arnesson’s face crinkled humorously. “Spent twenty years developing a cast-iron offensive that was to add new decimal points to the game. Wrote a book about it. Then went forth proselytizing like a crusader before the gates of Damascus. He’s always been a great patron of chess, contributing to tournaments and scurrying round the world to attend the various chess jousting-bouts. Consequently was able to get his gambit tested. It made a great stir among the infra-champions of the Manhattan Chess Club. Then poor Pardee organized a series of Masters Tournaments. Paid all the expenses himself. Cost him a fortune, by the way. And of course he stipulated that the Pardee gambit be played exclusively. Well, well, it was very sad. When men like Doctor Lasker and Capablanca and Rubinstein and Finn got to combating it, it went to pieces. Almost every player who used it lost. It was disqualified—even worse than the ill-fated Rice gambit. Terrible blow for Pardee. It put snow in his hair and took all the rubber out of his muscles. Aged him, in short. He’s a broken man.”

  “I know the history of the gambit,” murmured Vance, his eyes resting pensively on the ceiling. “I’ve used it myself. Edward Lasker* taught it to me… ”

  The uniformed officer again appeared in the archway and beckoned to Heath. The sergeant rose with alacrity—the ramifications of chess obviously bored him—and went into the hall. A moment later he returned bearing a small sheet of paper.

  “Here’s a funny one, sir,” he said, handing it to Markham. “The officer outside happened to see it sticking outa the mailbox just now and thought he’d take a peep at it.—What do you make of it, sir?”

  Markham studied it with puzzled amazement and then without a word handed it to Vance. I rose and looked over his shoulder. The paper was of the conventional typewriter size and had been folded to fit into the mailbox. It contained several lines of typing done on a machine with elite characters and a faded blue ribbon.

  The first line read:

  Joseph Cochrane Robin is dead.

  The second line asked:

  Who Killed Cock Robin?

  Underneath was typed: