The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Markham frowned. He understood Vance so well that he knew the other’s levity was only superficial—that, indeed, it cloaked some particularly serious purpose. And the experience of a long, intimate friendship had taught him that Vance’s actions—however unreasonable they might appear—were never the result of an idle whim.

  “Very well,” he acquiesced. “But I’d be grateful for an economy of words.”

  Vance sighed mournfully.

  “Your attitude is so typical of the spirit of breathless speed existing in this restless day.” He fixed an inquisitive gaze on Heath. “Tell me, Sergeant: you saw the body of Julia Greene, didn’t you?”

  “Sure, I saw it.”

  “Was her position in the bed a natural one?”

  “How do I know how she generally laid in bed?” Heath was restive and in bad humor. “She was half sitting up, with a coupla pillows under her shoulders, and the covers pulled up.”

  “Nothing unusual about her attitude?”

  “Not that I could see. There hadn’t been a struggle, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And her hands: were they outside or under the covers?”

  Heath looked up, mildly astonished.

  “They were outside. And, now that you mention it, they had a tight hold on the spread.”

  “Clutching it, in fact?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Vance leaned forward quickly.

  “And her face, Sergeant? Had she been shot in her sleep?”

  “It didn’t look that way. Her eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead.”

  “Her eyes were open and staring,” repeated Vance, a note of eagerness coming into his voice. “What would you say her expression indicated? Fear? Horror? Surprise?”

  Heath regarded Vance shrewdly. “Well, it mighta been any one of ’em. Her mouth was open, like as if she was surprised at something.”

  “And she was clutching the spread with both hands.” Vance’s look drifted into space. Then slowly he rose and walked the length of the office and back, his head down. He halted in front of the District Attorney’s desk, and leaned over, resting both hands on the back of a chair.

  “Listen, Markham. There’s something terrible and unthinkable going on in that house. No haphazard unknown assassin came in by the front door last night and shot down those two women. The crime was planned—thought out. Some one lay in wait—some one who knew his way about, knew where the light-switches were, knew when everyone was asleep, knew when the servants had retired—knew just when and how to strike the blow. Some deep, awful motive lies behind that crime. There are depths beneath depths in what happened last night—obscure fetid chambers of the human soul. Black hatreds, unnatural desires, hideous impulses, obscene ambitions are at the bottom of it; and you are only playing into the murderer’s hands when you sit back and refuse to see its significance.”

  His voice had a curious hushed quality, and it was difficult to believe that this was the habitually debonair and cynical Vance.

  “That house is polluted. Markham. It’s crumbling in decay—not material decay, perhaps, but a putrefaction far more terrible. The very heart and essence of that old house is rotting away. And all the inmates are rotting with it, disintegrating in spirit and mind and character. They’ve been polluted by the very atmosphere they’ve created. This crime, which you take so lightly, was inevitable in such a setting. I only wonder it was not more terrible, more vile. It marked one of the tertiary stages of the general dissolution of that abnormal establishment.”

  He paused, and extended his hand in a hopeless gesture.

  “Think of the situation. That old, lonely, spacious house, exuding the musty atmosphere of dead generations, faded inside and out, run down, dingy, filled with ghosts of another day, standing there in its ill-kept grounds, lapped by the dirty waters of the river... And then think of those six ill-sorted, restless, unhealthy beings compelled to live there in daily contact for a quarter of a century—such was old Tobias Greene’s perverted idealism. And they’ve lived there, day in and day out, in that mouldy miasma of antiquity—unfit to meet the conditions of any alternative, too weak or too cowardly to strike out alone; held by an undermining security and a corrupting ease; growing to hate the very sight of one another, becoming bitter, spiteful, jealous, vicious; wearing down each other’s nerves to the raw; consumed with resentment, aflame with hate, thinking evil—complaining, fighting, snarling... Then, at last, the breaking-point—the logical, ineluctable figuration of all this self-feeding, ingrowing hatred.”

  “All of that is easy to understand,” agreed Markham. “But, after all, your conclusion is wholly theoretic, not to say literary.—By what tangible links do you connect last night’s shooting with the admittedly abnormal situation at the Greene mansion?”

  “There are no tangible links—that’s the horror of it. But the joinders are there, however shadowy. I began to sense them the minute I entered the house; and all this afternoon I was reaching for them blindly. But they eluded me at every turn. It was like a house of mazes and false passages and trapdoors and reeking oubliettes: nothing normal, nothing sane—a house in a nightmare, peopled by strange, abnormal creatures, each reflecting the subtle, monstrous horror that broke forth last night and went prowling about the old hallways. Didn’t you sense it? Didn’t you see the vague shape of this abomination continually flash out and disappear as we talked to these people and watched them battling against their own hideous thoughts and suspicions?”

  Markham moved uneasily and straightened a pile of papers before him. Vance’s unwonted gravity had affected him.

  “I understand perfectly what you mean,” he said. “But I don’t see that your impressions bring us any nearer to a new theory of the crime. The Greene mansion is unhealthy—that’s granted—and so, no doubt, are the people in it. But I’m afraid you’ve been oversusceptible to its atmosphere. You talk as if last night’s crime were comparable to the poisoning orgies of the Borgias, or the Marquise de Brinvilliers affair, or the murder of Drusus and Germanicus, or the suffocation of the York princes in the Tower. I’ll admit the setting is consonant with that sort of stealthy, romantic crime; but, after all, housebreakers and bandits are shooting people senselessly every week throughout the country, in very much the same way the two Greene women were shot.”

  “You’re shutting your eyes to the facts, Markham,” Vance declared earnestly. “You’re overlooking several strange features of last night’s crime—the horrified, astounded attitude of Julia at the moment of death; the illogical interval between the two shots; the fact that the lights were on in both rooms; Ada’s story of that hand reaching for her; the absence of any signs of a forced entry—”

  “What about those footprints in the snow?” interrupted Heath’s matter-of-fact voice.

  “What about them, indeed?” Vance wheeled about. “They’re as incomprehensible as the rest of this hideous business. Some one walked to and from the house within a half-hour of the crime; but it was some one who knew he could get in quietly and without disturbing any one.”

  “There’s nothing mysterious about that,” asserted the practical Sergeant. “There are four servants in the house, and any one of ’em could’ve been in on the job.”

  Vance smiled ironically.

  “And this accomplice in the house, who so generously opened the front door at a specified hour, failed to inform the intruder where the loot was, and omitted to acquaint him with the arrangement of the house; with the result that, once he was inside, he went astray, overlooked the dining-room, wandered up-stairs, went groping about the hall, got lost in the various bedrooms, had a seizure of panic, shot two women, turned on the lights by switches hidden behind the furniture, made his way down-stairs without a sound when Sproot was within a few feet of him, and walked out the front door to freedom!... A strange burglar, Sergeant. And an even stranger accomplice.—No; your explanation won’t do—decidedly it won’t do.” He turned back to Markham. “And the only way you’ll e
ver find the true explanation for those shootings is by understanding the unnatural situation that exists in the house itself.”

  “But we know the situation, Vance,” Markham argued patiently. “I’ll admit it’s an unusual one. But it’s not necessarily criminal. Antagonistic human elements are often thrown together; and a mutual hate is generated as a result. But mere hate is rarely a motive for murder; and it certainly does not constitute evidence of criminal activity.”

  “Perhaps not. But hatred and enforced propinquity may breed all manner of abnormalities—outrageous passions, abominable evils, devilish intrigues. And in the present case there are any number of curious and sinister facts that need explaining—”

  “Ah! Now you’re becoming more tangible. Just what are these facts that call for explanation?”

  Vance lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the table.

  “For instance, why did Chester Greene come here in the first place and solicit your help? Because of the disappearance of the gun? Maybe; but I doubt if it is the whole explanation. And what about the gun itself? Did it disappear? Or did Chester secrete it? Deuced queer about that gun. And Sibella said she saw it last week. But did she see it? We’ll know a lot more about the case when we can trace the peregrinations of the revolver.—And why did Chester hear the first shot so readily, when Rex, in the next room to Ada’s, says he failed to hear the second shot?—And that long interval between the two reports will need some explaining.—And there’s Sproot—the multilingual butler who happened to be reading Martial—Martial—by all that’s holy!—when the grim business took place, and came directly to the scene without meeting or hearing any one.—And just what significance attaches to the pious Hemming’s oracular pronouncements about the Lord of hosts smiting the Greenes as he did the children of Babylon? She has some obscure religious notion in her head—which, after all, may not be so obscure.—And the German cook: there’s a woman with, as we euphemistically say, a past. Despite her phlegmatic appearance, she’s not of the servant class; yet she’s been feeding the Greenes dutifully for over a dozen years. You recall her explanation of how she came to the Greenes? Her husband was a friend of old Tobias’s; and Tobias gave orders she was to remain as cook as long as she desired. She needs explaining, Markham—and a dashed lot of it.—And Rex, with his projecting parietals and his wambly body and his periodic fits. Why did he get so excited when we questioned him? He certainly didn’t act like an innocent and uncomprehending spectator of an attempted burglary.—And again I mention the lights. Who turned them on, and why? And in both rooms! In Julia’s room before the shot was fired, for she evidently saw the assassin and understood his purpose; and in Ada’s room, after the shooting! Those are facts which fairly shriek for explanation; for without an explanation they’re mad, irrational, utterly incredible.—And why wasn’t Von Blon at home in the middle of the night when Sproot phoned him? And how did it happen he nevertheless arrived so promptly? Coincidence?... And, by the by, Sergeant: was that double set of footprints like the single spoor of the doctor’s?”

  “There isn’t any way of telling. The snow was too flaky.”

  “It probably doesn’t matter particularly, anyhow.” Vance again faced Markham and resumed his recapitulation. “And then there are the points of difference in these two attacks. Julia was shot from the front when she was in bed, whereas Ada was shot in the back after she had risen from bed, although the murderer had ample time to go to her and take aim while she was still lying down. Why did he wait silently until the girl got up and approached him? How did he dare wait at all after he had killed Julia and alarmed the house? Does that strike you as panic? Or as cool-headedness?—And how did Julia’s door come to be unlocked at that particular time? That’s something I especially want clarified.—And perhaps you noticed, Markham, that Chester himself went to summon Sibella to the interview in the drawing-room, and that he remained with her a considerable time. Why, now, did he send Sproot for Rex, and fetch Sibella personally? And why the delay? I yearn for an explanation of what passed between them before they eventually appeared.—And why was Sibella so definite that there wasn’t a burglary, and yet so evasive when we asked her to suggest a counter-theory? What underlay her satirical frankness when she held up each member of the Greene household, including herself, as a possible suspect?—And then there are the details of Ada’s story. Some of them are amazing, incomprehensible, almost fabulous. There was no apparent sound in the room; yet she was conscious of a menacing presence. And that outstretched hand and the shuffling footsteps—we simply must have an explanation of those things. And her hesitancy about saying whether she thought it was a man or a woman; and Sibella’s evident belief that the girl thought it was she. That wants explaining, Markham.—And Sibella’s hysterical accusation against Ada. What lay behind that?—And don’t forget that curious scene between Sibella and Von Blon when he reproached her for her outburst. That was devilish odd. There’s some intimacy there—ça saute aux yeux.* You noticed how she obeyed him. And you doubtless observed, too, that Ada is rather fond of the doctor: snuggled up to him figuratively during the performance, opened her eyes on him wistfully, looked to him for protection. Oh, our little Ada has flutterings in his direction. And yet he adopts the hovering professional-bedside manner of a high-priced medico toward her, whereas he treats Sibella very much as Chester might if he had the courage.”

  Vance inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

  “Yes, Markham, there are many things that must be satisfactorily accounted for before I can believe in your hypothetical burglar.”

  Markham sat for a while, engrossed in his thoughts.

  “I’ve listened to your Homeric catalogue, Vance,” he said at length, “but I can’t say that it inflames me. You’ve suggested a number of interesting possibilities, and raised several points that might bear looking into. However, the only potential weight of your argument lies in an accumulation of items which, taken separately, are not particularly impressive. A plausible answer might be found for each one of them. The trouble is, the integers of your summary are without a connecting thread, and consequently must be regarded as separate units.”

  “That legal mind of yours!” Vance rose and paced up and down. “An accumulation of queer and unexplained facts centring about a crime is no more impressive than each separate item in the total! Well, well! I give up. I renounce all reason. I fold up my tent like the Arabs and as silently steal away.” He took up his coat. “I leave you to your fantastic, delirious burglar, who walks without keys into a house and steals nothing, who knows where electric switches are hidden but can’t find a staircase, who shoots women and then turns up the lights. When you find him, my dear Lycurgus, you should, in all humaneness, send him to the psychopathic ward. He’s quite unaccountable, I assure you.”

  Markham, despite his opposition, had not been unimpressed. Vance unquestionably had undermined to some extent his belief in a housebreaker. But I could readily understand why he was reluctant to abandon this theory until it had been thoroughly tested. His next words, in fact, explained his attitude.

  “I’m not denying the remote possibility that this affair may go deeper than appears. But there’s too little to go on at present to warrant an investigation along other than routine lines. We can’t very well stir up an ungodly scandal by raking the members of a prominent family over the coals, when there’s not a scintilla of evidence against any one of them. It’s too unjust and dangerous a proceeding. We must at least wait until the police have finished their investigation. Then, if nothing develops, we can again take inventory and decide how to proceed... How long, Sergeant, do you figure on being busy?”

  Heath took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it thoughtfully.

  “That’s hard to say, sir. Dubois’ll finish up his fingerprinting to-morrow, and we’re checking up on the regulars as fast as we can. Also, I’ve got two men digging up the records of the Greene servants. It may take a lot of time, and it may go quick. Depends on the break
s we get.”

  Vance sighed.

  “And it was such a neat, fascinatin’ crime! I’ve rather been looking forward to it, don’t y’ know, and now you talk of prying into the early amours of serving-maids and that sort of thing. It’s most disheartenin’.”

  He buttoned his ulster about him and walked to the door.

  “Ah, well, there’s nothing for me to do while you Jasons are launched on your quaint quest. I think I’ll retire and resume my translation of Delacroix’s ‘Journal.’”

  But Vance was not destined then to finish this task he had had in mind so long. Three days later the front pages of the country’s press carried glaring head-lines telling of a second grim and unaccountable tragedy at the old Greene mansion, which altered the entire character of the case and immediately lifted it into the realm of the foremost causes célèbres* of modern times. After this second blow had fallen all ideas of a casual burglar were banished. There could no longer be any doubt that a hidden death-dealing horror stalked through the dim corridors of that fated house.

  Footnotes

  * That’s quite obvious.

  * Famous criminal cases.

  CHAPTER EIGHT The Second Tragedy

  (Friday, November 12; 8 a.m.)

  THE DAY AFTER we had taken leave of Markham at his office the rigor of the weather suddenly relaxed. The sun came out, and the thermometer rose nearly thirty degrees. Toward night of the second day, however, a fine, damp snow began to fall, spreading a thin white blanket over the city; but around eleven the skies were again clear.

  I mention these facts because they had a curious bearing on the second crime at the Greene mansion. Footprints again appeared on the front walk; and, as a result of the clinging softness of the snow, the police also found tracks in the lower hall and on the marble stairs.