The Bishop Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Vance looked quickly about him, and an expression of disappointment came over his face. “This is the only place left,” he remarked with the calmness of desperation.

  After a more careful scrutiny of the room, he stepped to the corner by the little window and peered down at a battered suitcase which lay on its side against the wall. I noticed that it was unlatched and that its straps hung free. Leaning over, he threw the cover back.

  “Ah! Here, at least, is something for you, Markham.”

  We crowded about him. In the suitcase was an old Corona typewriter. A sheet of paper was in the carriage; and on it had already been typed, in pale blue élite characters, the two lines:

  Little Miss Muffet

  Sat on a tuffet

  At this point the typist had evidently been interrupted, or for some other reason had not completed the Mother Goose rhyme.

  “The new Bishop note for the press,” observed Vance. Then, reaching into the suitcase, he lifted out a pile of blank paper and envelopes. At the bottom, beside the machine, lay a red leather notebook with thin yellow leaves. He handed it to Markham with the terse announcement: “Drukker’s calculations on the quantum theory.”

  But there was still a look of defeat in his eyes; and again he began inspecting the room. Presently he went to an old dressing table which stood against the wall opposite to the window. As he bent over to peer behind it he suddenly drew back and, lifting his head, sniffed several times. At the same moment he caught sight of something on the floor at his feet, and kicked it toward the center of the room. We looked down at it with astonishment. It was a gas mask of the kind used by chemists.

  “Stand back, you chaps!” he ordered; and holding one hand to his nose and mouth, he swung the dressing table away from the wall. Directly behind it was a small cupboard door about three feet high, set into the wall. He wrenched it open and looked inside, then slammed it shut immediately.

  Brief as was my view of the interior of the cupboard, I was able to glimpse its contents clearly. It was fitted with two shelves. On the lower one were several books lying open. On the upper shelf stood an Erlenmeyer flask clamped to an iron support, a spirit lamp, a condenser tube, a glass beaker, and two small bottles.

  Vance turned and gave us a despairing look.

  “We may as well go; there’s nothing more here.”

  We returned to the drawing room, leaving Tracy to guard the door to the attic.

  “Perhaps, after all, you were justified in your search,” acknowledged Markham, studying Vance gravely. “I don’t like such methods, however. If we hadn’t found the typewriter—”

  “Oh, that!” Vance, preoccupied and restless, went to the window overlooking the archery range. “I wasn’t hunting for the typewriter—or the notebook, either. What do they matter?” His chin fell forward on his breast, and his eyes closed in a kind of lethargy of defeat. “Everything’s gone wrong—my logic has failed. We’re too late.”

  “I don’t pretend to know what you’re grumbling about,” said Markham. “But at least you’ve supplied me evidence of a sort. I’ll now be able to arrest Arnesson when he returns from the university.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But I wasn’t thinking of Arnesson, or the arrest of the culprit, or the triumph of the district attorney’s office. I was hoping—”

  He broke off and stiffened.

  “We’re not too late! I didn’t think far enough.” He went swiftly to the archway. “It’s the Drukker house we must search… Hurry!” He was already half-running down the hall, Heath behind him, and Markham and I bringing up the rear.

  We followed him down the rear stairs, across the archery room, and out on the range. We did not know, and I doubt if any of us even guessed, what was in his mind; but some of his inner excitation had been communicated to us, and we realized that only a vital urgency could have shaken him so completely out of his usual attitude of disinterest and calm.

  When we came to the screen porch of the Drukker house, he reached through the broken wire netting and released the catch. The kitchen door, to my astonishment, was unlocked; but Vance seemed to expect this, for he unhesitatingly turned the knob and threw it open.

  “Wait!” he directed, pausing in the little rear hallway. “There’s no need to search the entire house. The most likely place… Yes! Come along…upstairs…somewhere in the center of the house…a closet most likely…where no one could hear… ” As he spoke he led the way up the rear stairs, past Mrs. Drukker’s room and the study and thence to the third floor. There were but two doors on this upper hall—one at the extreme end, and a smaller door set midway in the right wall.

  Vance went straight to the latter. There was a key protruding from the lock, and, turning it, he drew open the door. Only a shadowy blackness met our eyes. Vance was on his knees in a second, groping inside.

  “Quick, Sergeant. Your flashlight.”

  Almost before he had uttered the words, a luminous circle fell on the floor of the closet. What I saw sent a chill of horror over me. A choked exclamation burst from Markham; and a soft whistle told me that Heath, too, was appalled by the sight. Before us on the floor, in a limp, silent heap, lay the little girl who had brought flowers to her broken Humpty Dumpty on the morning of his funeral. Her golden hair was disheveled; her face was deathly pale, and there were streaks down her cheeks where the futile tears had welled forth and dried.

  Vance bent over and put his ear to her heart. Then he gathered her tenderly in his arms.

  “Poor little Miss Muffet,” he whispered and, rising, went toward the front stairs. Heath preceded him, flashing his light all the way so there would be no chance of his stumbling. In the main lower hall he paused.

  “Unbolt the door, Sergeant.”

  Heath obeyed with alacrity, and Vance stepped out on the sidewalk.

  “Go to the Dillards’ and wait for me there,” he flung back over his shoulder. And with the child clasped closely to his breast, he started diagonally across 76th Street to a house on which I could make out a doctor’s brass nameplate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Curtain Falls

  (Tuesday, April 26; 11 a.m.)

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER Vance rejoined us in the Dillard drawing room.

  “She’s going to be all right,” he announced, sinking into a chair and lighting a cigarette. “She was only unconscious, had fainted from shock and fright; and she was half-suffocated.” His face darkened. “There were bruises on her little wrist. She probably struggled in that empty house when she failed to find Humpty Dumpty; and then the beast forced her into the closet and locked the door. No time to kill her, d’ ye see. Furthermore, killing wasn’t in the book. ‘Little Miss Muffet’ wasn’t killed—merely frightened away. She’d have died, though, from lack of air. And he was safe; no one could hear her crying… ”

  Markham’s eyes rested on Vance affectionately. “I’m sorry I tried to hold you back,” he said simply. (For all his conventionally legal instincts, there was a fundamental bigness to his nature.) “You were right in forcing the issue, Vance… And you, too, Sergeant. We owe a great deal to your determination and faith.”

  Heath was embarrassed. “Oh, that’s all right, sir. You see, Mr. Vance had me all worked up about the kid. And I like kids, sir.”

  Markham turned an inquisitive look on Vance.

  “You expected to find the child alive?”

  “Yes, but drugged or stunned perhaps. I didn’t think of her as dead, for that would have contravened the Bishop’s joke.”

  Heath had been pondering some troublous point. “What I can’t get through my head,” he said, “is why this Bishop, who’s been so damn careful about everything else, should leave the door of the Drukker house unlocked.”

  “We were expected to find the child,” Vance told him. “Everything was made easy for us. Very considerate of the Bishop, what? But we weren’t supposed to find her till tomorrow—after the papers had received the Little Miss Muffet notes. They were to have been our
clue. But we anticipated the gentleman.”

  “But why weren’t the notes sent yesterday?”

  “It was no doubt the Bishop’s original intention to post his poetry last night; but I imagine he decided it was best for his purpose to let the child’s disappearance attract public attention first. Otherwise the relationship between Madeleine Moffat and little Miss Muffet might have been obscured.”

  “Yeh!” snarled Heath through his teeth. “And by tomorrow the kid woulda been dead. No chance then of her identifying him.”

  Markham looked at his watch and rose with determination.

  “There’s no point in waiting for Arnesson’s return. The sooner we arrest him the better.” He was about to give Heath an order when Vance intervened.

  “Don’t force the issue, Markham. You haven’t any real evidence against the man. It’s too delicate a situation for aggression. We must go carefully or we’ll fail.”

  “I realize that the finding of the typewriter and the notebook is not conclusive,” concurred Markham. “But the identification by the child—”

  “Oh, my dear fellow! What weight would a jury attach to a frightened five-year-old girl’s identification without powerful contribut’ry evidence? A clever lawyer could nullify it in five minutes. And even assuming you could make the identification hold, what would it boot you? It wouldn’t connect Arnesson in any way with the Bishop murders. You could only prosecute him for attempted kidnapping—the child’s unharmed, remember. And if you should, through a legal miracle, get a doubtful conviction, Arnesson would receive at most a few years in the bastille. That wouldn’t end this horror… No, no. You mustn’t be precipitate.”

  Reluctantly Markham resumed his seat. He saw the force of Vance’s argument.

  “But we can’t let this thing go on,” he declared ferociously. “We must stop this maniac some way.”

  “Some way—yes.” Vance began pacing the room restlessly. “We may be able to wangle the truth out of him by subterfuge: he doesn’t know yet that we’ve found the child… It’s possible Professor Dillard could assist us—” He halted and stood looking down at the floor. “Yes! That’s our one chance. We must confront Arnesson with what we know when the professor is present. The situation is sure to force an issue of some kind. The professor now will do all in his power to help convict Arnesson.”

  “You believe he knows more than he had told us?”

  “Undoubtedly. I’ve told you so from the first. And when he hears of the Little Miss Muffet episode, it’s not unlikely he’ll supply us with the evidence we need.”

  “It’s a long chance.” Markham was pessimistic. “But it can do no harm to try. In any event, I shall arrest Arnesson before I leave here and hope for the best.”

  A few moments later the front door opened and Professor Dillard appeared in the hall opposite the archway. He scarcely acknowledged Markham’s greeting—he was scanning our faces as if trying to read the meaning of our unexpected visit. Finally he put a question.

  “You have, perhaps, thought over what I said last night?”

  “Not only have we thought it over,” said Markham, “but Mr. Vance has found the thing that was disturbing you. After we left here, he showed me a copy of The Pretenders.”

  “Ah!” The exclamation was like a sigh of relief. “For days that play has been in my mind, poisoning every thought… ” He looked up fearfully. “What does it mean?”

  Vance answered the question.

  “It means, sir, that you’ve led us to the truth. We’re waiting now for Mr. Arnesson.—And I think it would be well if we had a talk with you in the meantime. You may be able to help us.”

  The old man hesitated. “I had hoped not to be made an instrument in the boy’s conviction.” His voice held a tragic paternal note. But presently his features hardened; a vindictive light shone in his eyes; and his hand tightened over the knob of his stick. “However, I can’t consider my own feelings now. Come, I will do what I can.”

  On reaching the library, he paused by the sideboard and poured himself a glass of port. When he had drunk it, he turned to Markham with a look of apology.

  “Forgive me. I’m not quite myself.” He drew forward the little chess table and placed glasses on it for all of us. “Please overlook my discourtesy.” He filled the glasses and sat down.

  We drew up chairs. There was none of us, I think, who did not feel the need of a glass of wine after the harrowing events we had just passed through.

  When we had settled ourselves, the professor lifted heavy eyes to Vance, who had taken a seat opposite to him.

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “Don’t try to spare me.”

  Vance drew out his cigarette case.

  “First, let me ask you a question. Where was Mr. Arnesson between five and six yesterday afternoon?”

  “I—don’t know.” There was a reluctance in the words. “He had tea here in the library, but he went out about half past four, and I didn’t see him again until dinnertime.”

  Vance regarded the other sympathetically for a moment, then he said, “We’ve found the typewriter on which the Bishop notes were printed. It was in an old suitcase hidden in the attic of this house.”

  The professor showed no sign of being startled. “You were able to identify it?”

  “Beyond any doubt. Yesterday a little girl named Madeleine Moffat disappeared from the playground in the park. There was a sheet of paper in the machine, and on it had already been typed: ‘Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet.’ ”

  Professor Dillard’s head sank forward. “Another insane atrocity! If only I hadn’t waited till last night to warn you—!”

  “No great harm has been done,” Vance hastened to inform him. “We found the child in time; she’s out of danger now.”

  “Ah!”

  “She had been locked in the hall closet on the top floor of the Drukker house. We had thought she was here somewhere—which is how we came to search your attic.”

  There was a silence; then the professor asked, “What more have you to tell me?”

  “Drukker’s notebook containing his recent quantum researches was stolen from his room the night of his death. We found this notebook in the attic with the typewriter.”

  “He stooped even to that!” It was not a question, but an exclamation of incredulity. “Are you sure of your conclusions? Perhaps if I had made no suggestion last night—had not sowed the seed of suspicion… ”

  “There can be no doubt,” declared Vance softly. “Mr. Markham intends to arrest Mr. Arnesson when he returns from the university. But to be frank with you, sir: we have practically no legal evidence, and it is a question in Mr. Markham’s mind whether or not the law can even hold him. The most we can hope for is a conviction for attempted kidnapping through the child’s identification.”

  “Ah, yes…the child would know.” A bitterness crept into the old man’s eyes. “Still, there should be some means of obtaining justice for the other crimes.”

  Vance sat smoking pensively, his eyes on the wall beyond. At last he spoke with quiet gravity.

  “If Mr. Arnesson were convinced that our case against him was a strong one, he might choose suicide as a way out. That perhaps would be the most humane solution for everyone.”

  Markham was about to make an indignant protest, but Vance anticipated him.

  “Suicide is not an indefensible act per se. The Bible, for instance, contains many accounts of heroic suicide. What finer example of courage than Rhazis’, when he threw himself from the tower to escape the yoke of Demetrius?* There was gallantry, too, in the death of Saul’s sword-bearer and in the self-hanging of Ahithophel. And surely the suicides of Samson and Judas Iscariot had virtue. History is filled with notable suicides—Brutus and Cato of Utica, Hannibal, Lucretia, Cleopatra, Seneca… Nero killed himself lest he fall into the hands of Otho and the Pretorian guards. In Greece we have the famous self-destruction of Demosthenes; and Empedocles threw himself in the crater of Etna. Aristotle was the fir
st great thinker to advance the dictum that suicide is an antisocial act, but, according to tradition, he himself took poison after the death of Alexander. And in modern times let us not forget the sublime gesture of Baron Nogi—”

  “All that is no justification of the act,” Markham retorted. “The law—”

  “Ah, yes—the law. In Chinese law every criminal condemned to death has the option of suicide. The Codex adopted by the French National Assembly at the end of the eighteenth century abolished all punishments for suicide; and in the Sachsenspiegel —the principal foundation of Teuton law—it is plainly stated that suicide is not a punishable act. Moreover, among the Donatists, Circumcellions, and Patricians suicide was considered pleasing to the gods. And even in More’s Utopia there was a synod to pass on the right of the individual to take his own life… Law, Markham, is for the protection of society. What of a suicide that makes possible that protection? Are we to invoke a legal technicality, when, by so doing, we actually lay society open to continued danger? Is there no law higher than those on the statute books?”

  Markham was sorely troubled. He rose and walked the length of the room and back, his face dark with anxiety. When he sat down again, he looked at Vance a long while, his fingers drumming with nervous indecision on the table.

  “The innocent, of course, must be considered,” he said in a voice of discouragement. “As morally wrong as suicide is, I can see your point that at times it may be theoretically justified.” (Knowing Markham as I did, I realized what this concession had cost him; and I realized, too, for the first time, how utterly hopeless he felt in the face of the scourge of horror which it was his duty to wipe out.)

  The old professor nodded understandingly. “Yes, there are some secrets so hideous that it is well for the world not to know them. A higher justice may often be achieved without the law taking its toll.”

  As he spoke the door opened, and Arnesson stepped into the room.