The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “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.”

  “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’ stairwell 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.

  Chester Greene presented Markham, and let his mother take the rest of us for granted. At first she did not acknowledge the introduction, but, after appraising Markham for a moment, she gave him a nod of resentful forbearance and held out to him a long bony hand.

  “I suppose there’s no way to avoid having my home overrun in this fashion,” she said wearily, assuming an air of great toleration. “I was just endeavoring to get a little rest. My back pains me so much to-day, after all the excitement last night. But what do I matter—an old paralyzed woman like me? No one considers me anyway, Mr. Markham. But they’re perfectly right. We invalids are of no use in the world, are we?”

  Markham muttered some polite protestation, to which Mrs. Greene paid not the slightest attention. She had turned, with seemingly great difficulty, to the nurse.

  “Fix my pillows, Miss Craven,” she ordered impatiently, and then added, in a whining tone: “Even you don’t give a thought to my comfort.” The nurse complied without a word. “Now, you can go in and sit with Ada until Doctor Von Blon comes.—How is the dear child?” Suddenly her voice had assumed a note of simulated solicitude.

  “She’s much better, Mrs. Greene.” The nurse spoke in a colorless, matter-of-fact tone, and passed quietly into the dressing-room.

  The woman on the bed turned complaining eyes upon Markham.

  “It’s a terrible thing to be a cripple, unable to walk or even stand alone. Both my legs have been hopelessly paralyzed for ten years. Think of it, Mr. Markham: I’ve spent ten years in this bed and that chair”—she pointed to an invalid’s chair in the alcove—“and I can’t even move from one to the other unless I’m lifted bodily. But I console myself with the thought that I’m not long for this world; and I try to be patient. It wouldn’t be so bad, though, if my children were only more considerate. But I suppose I expect too much. Youth and health give little thought to the old and feeble—it’s the way of the world. And so I make the best of it. It’s my fate to be a burden to every one.”

  She sighed and drew the shawl more closely about her.

  “You want to ask me some questions perhaps? I don’t see what I can tell you that will be of any help, but I’m only too glad to do whatever I can. I haven’t slept a wink, and my back has been paining me terribly as a result of all this commotion. But I’m not complaining.”

  Markham had stood looking at the old lady sympathetically. Indeed, she was a pitiful figure. Her long invalidism and solitude had warped what had probably been a brilliant and generous mind; and she had now become a kind of introspective martyr, with an exaggerated sensitiveness to her affliction. I could see that Markham’s instinct was to leave her immediately with a few consoling words; but his sense of duty directed him to remain and learn what he could.

  “I don’t wish to annoy you more than is absolutely necessary, madam,” he said in a kindly voice. “But it might help considerably if you permitted me to put one or two questions.”

  “What’s a little annoyance, more or less?” she asked. “I’ve long since become used to it. Ask me anything you choose.”

  Markham bowed with Old World courtesy. “You are very kind, madam.” Then, after a moment’s pause: “Mr. Greene tells me you did not hear the shot that was fired in your oldest daughter’s room, but that the shot in Miss Ada’s room wakened you.”

  “That is so.” She nodded slowly. “Julia’s room is a considerable distance away—across the hall. But Ada always leaves the doors open between her room and mine in case I should need anything in the night. Naturally the shot in her room wakened me… Let me see. I must have just fallen to sleep. My back was giving me a great deal of trouble last night; I had suffered all day with it, though I of course didn’t tell any of the children about it. Little they care how their paralyzed old mother suffers… And then, just as I had managed to doze off, there came the report, and I was wide-awake again—lying here helpless, unable to move, and wondering what awful thing might be going to happen to me. And no one came to see if I was all right; no one thought of me, alone and defenseless. But then, no one ever thinks of me.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t any lack of consideration, Mrs. Greene,” Markham assured her earnestly. “The situation probably drove everything momentarily from their minds except the two victims of the shooting.—Tell me this: did you hear any other sounds in Miss Ada’s room after the shot awakened you?”

  “I heard the poor girl fall—at least, it sounded like that.”

  “But no other noises of any kind? No footsteps, for instance?”

  “Footsteps?” She seemed to make an effort to recall her impressions. “No; no footsteps.”

  “Did you hear the door into the hall open or close,
madam?” It was Vance who put the question.

  The woman turned her eyes sharply and glared at him.

  “No, I heard no door open or close.”

  “That’s rather queer, too, don’t you think?” pursued Vance. “The intruder must have left the room.”

  “I suppose he must have, if he’s not there now,” she replied acidly, turning again to the District Attorney. “Is there anything else you’d care to know?”

  Markham evidently had perceived the impossibility of eliciting any vital information from her.

  “I think not,” he answered; then added: “You of course heard the butler and your son here enter Miss Ada’s room?”

  “Oh, yes. They made enough noise doing it—they didn’t consider my feelings in the least. That fuss-budget, Sproot, actually cried out for Chester like a hysterical woman; and, from the way he raised his voice over the telephone, one would have thought Doctor Von Blon was deaf. Then Chester had to rouse the whole house for some unknown reason. Oh, there was no peace or rest for me last night, I can tell you! And the police tramped around the house for hours like a drove of wild cattle. It was positively disgraceful. And here was I—a helpless old woman—entirely neglected and forgotten, suffering agonies with my spine.”

  After a few commiserating banalities Markham thanked her for her assistance, and withdrew. As we passed out and walked toward the stairs I could hear her calling out angrily: “Nurse! Nurse! Can’t you hear me? Come at once and arrange my pillows. What do you mean by neglecting me this way…?”

  The voice trailed off mercifully as we descended to the main hall.

  Footnotes

  * That is, the French on a restaurant menu.

  * Housewife.

  * Wardrobe.

  CHAPTER FOURThe Missing Revolver

  (Tuesday, November 9; 3 p.m.)

  “THE MATER’S A crabbed old soul,” Greene apologized offhandedly when we were again in the drawing-room. “Always grousing about her doting offspring.—Well, where do we go from here?”

  Markham seemed lost in thought, and it was Vance who answered.

  “Let us take a peep at the servants and hearken to their tale: Sproot for a starter.”

  Markham roused himself and nodded, and Greene rose and pulled a silken bell-cord near the archway. A minute later the butler appeared and stood at obsequious attention just inside the room. Markham had appeared somewhat at sea and even uninterested during the investigation, and Vance assumed command.

  “Sit down, Sproot, and tell us as briefly as possible just what occurred last night.”

  Sproot came forward slowly, his eyes on the floor, but remained standing before the centre-table. “I was reading Martial, sir, in my room,” he began, lifting his gaze submissively, “when I thought I heard a muffled shot. I wasn’t quite sure, for the automobiles in the street back-fire quite loud at times; but at last I said to myself I’d better investigate. I was in negligé, if you understand what I mean, sir; so I slipped on my bathrobe and came down. I didn’t know just where the noise had come from; but when I was half-way down the steps, I heard another shot, and this time it sounded like it came from Miss Ada’s room. So I went there at once, and tried the door. It was unlocked, and when I looked in I saw Miss Ada lying on the floor—a very distressing sight, sir. I called to Mr. Chester, and we lifted the poor young lady to the bed. Then I telephoned to Doctor Von Blon.”

  Vance scrutinized him.

  “You were very courageous, Sproot, to brave a dark hall looking for the source of a shot in the middle of the night.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the man answered, with great humility. “I always try to do my duty by the Greene family. I’ve been with them—”

  “We know all that, Sproot.” Vance cut him short. “The light was on in Miss Ada’s room, I understand, when you opened the door.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you saw no one, or heard no noise? No door closing, for instance?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And yet the person who fired the shot must have been somewhere in the hall at the same time you were there.”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “And he might well have taken a shot at you, too.”

  “Quite so, sir.” Sproot seemed wholly indifferent to the danger he had escaped. “But what will be, will be, sir—if you’ll pardon my saying so. And I’m an old man—”

  “Tut, tut! You’ll probably live a considerable time yet—just how long I can’t, of course, say.”

  “No, sir.” Sproot’s eyes gazed blankly ahead. “No one understands the mysteries of life and death.”

  “You’re somewhat philosophic, I see,” drily commented Vance. Then: “When you phoned to Doctor Von Blon, was he in?”

  “No, sir; but the night nurse told me he’d be back any minute, and that she’d send him over. He arrived in less than half an hour.”

  Vance nodded. “That will be all, thank you, Sproot. And now please send me die gnädige Frau Köchin.”*

  “Yes, sir.” And the old butler shuffled from the room.

  Vance’s eyes followed him thoughtfully.

  “An inveiglin’ character,” he murmured.

  Greene snorted. “You don’t have to live with him. He’d have said ‘Yes, sir,’ if you’d spoken to him in Walloon or Volapük. A sweet little playmate to have snooping round the house twenty-four hours a day!”

  The cook, a portly, phlegmatic German woman of about forty-five, named Gertrude Mannheim, came in and seated herself on the edge of a chair near the entrance. Vance, after a moment’s keen inspection of her, asked:

  “Were you born in this country, Frau Mannheim?”

  “I was born in Baden,” she answered, in flat, rather guttural tones. “I came to America when I was twelve.”

  “You have not always been a cook, I take it.” Vance’s voice had a slightly different intonation from that which he had used with Sproot.

  At first the woman did not answer.

  “No, sir,” she said finally. “Only since the death of my husband.”

  “How did you happen to come to the Greenes?”

  Again she hesitated. “I had met Mr. Tobias Greene: he knew my husband. When my husband died there wasn’t any money. And I remembered Mr. Greene, and I thought—”

  “I understand.” Vance paused, his eyes in space. “You heard nothing of what happened here last night?”

  “No, sir. Not until Mr. Chester called up the stairs and said for us to get dressed and come down.”

  Vance rose and turned to the window overlooking the East River.

  “That’s all, Frau Mannheim. Be so good as to tell the senior maid—Hemming, isn’t she?—to come here.”

  Without a word the cook left us, and her place was presently taken by a tall, slatternly woman, with a sharp, prudish face and severely combed hair. She wore a black, one-piece dress, and heelless vici kid shoes; and her severity of mien was emphasized by a pair of thick-lensed spectacles.

  “I understand, Hemming,” began Vance, reseating himself before the fireplace, “that you heard neither shot last night, and learned of the tragedy only when called by Mr. Greene.”

  The woman nodded with a jerky, emphatic movement.

  “I was spared,” she said, in a rasping voice. “But the tragedy, as you call it, had to come sooner or later. It was an act of God, if you ask me.”

  “Well, we’re not asking you, Hemming; but we’re delighted to have your opinion.—So God had a hand in the shooting, eh?”

  “He did that!” The woman spoke with religious fervor. “The Greenes are an ungodly, wicked family.” She leered defiantly at Chester Greene, who laughed uneasily. “ ‘For I shall rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts—the name, the remnant, and son, and daughter, and nephew’—only there ain’t no nephew—‘and I will sweep them with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord.’ ”

  Vance regarded her musingly.

  “I see you have misread Isaiah. And have you any ce
lestial information as to who was chosen by the Lord to personify the besom?”

  The woman compressed her lips. “Who knows?”

  “Ah! Who, indeed?… But to descend to temporal things: I assume you weren’t surprised at what happened last night?”

  “I’m never surprised at the mysterious workin’s of the Almighty.”

  Vance sighed. “You may return to your Scriptural perusings, Hemming. Only, I wish you’d pass en route and tell Barton we crave her presence here.”

  The woman rose stiffly and passed from the room like an animated ramrod.

  Barton came in, obviously frightened. But her fear was insufficient to banish completely her instinctive coquetry. A certain coyness showed through the alarmed glance she gave us, and one hand automatically smoothed back the chestnut hair over her ear. Vance adjusted his monocle.

  “You really should wear Alice blue, Barton,” he advised her seriously. “Much more becoming than cerise to your olive complexion.”

  The girl’s apprehensiveness relaxed, and she gave Vance a puzzled, kittenish look.

  “But what I particularly wanted you to come here for,” he went on, “was to ask you if Mr. Greene has ever kissed you.”

  “Which—Mr. Greene?” she stammered, completely disconcerted.

  Chester had, at Vance’s question, jerked himself erect in his chair and started to splutter an irate objection. But articulation failed him, and he turned to Markham with speechless indignation.

  The corners of Vance’s mouth twitched. “It really doesn’t matter, Barton,” he said quickly.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me any questions about what happened last night?” the girl asked, with obvious disappointment.

  “Oh! Do you know anything about what happened?”

  “Why, no,” she admitted. “I was asleep—”

  “Exactly. Therefore, I sha’n’t bother you with questions.” He dismissed her good-naturedly.

  “Damn it, Markham, I protest!” cried Greene, when Barton had left us. “I call this—this gentleman’s levity rotten-bad taste—damme if I don’t!”