The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “But, Sergeant,” said Vance mildly, “the galoshes weren’t there when your sleuths were looking for the revolver. On both former occasions the Johnny who wore ’em had plenty of time to put ’em away safely. But today, d’ ye see, he had no chance to sequester them; so he left ’em in the linen-closet for the time being.”

  “Oh, that’s it, is it?” Heath growled vaguely. “Well, what’s the rest of the story, Mr. Vance?”

  “That’s all there is to date. If I knew the rest I’d know who fired the shots. But I might remind you that neither of your sergents-de-ville* saw any suspicious person leave here.”

  “Good God, Vance!” Markham was on his feet. “That means that the murderer is in the house this minute.”

  “At any rate,” returned Vance lazily, “I think we are justified in assuming that the murderer was here when we arrived.”

  “But nobody’s left the place but Von Blon,” blurted Heath.

  Vance nodded. “Oh, it’s wholly possible the murderer is still in the house, Sergeant.”

  Footnotes

  * Proper.

  * Policemen.

  CHAPTER SIXTEENThe Lost Poisons

  (Tuesday, November 30; 2 p.m.)

  MARKHAM AND VANCE and I had a late lunch at the Stuyvesant Club. During the meal the subject of the murder was avoided as if by tacit agreement; but when we sat smoking over our coffee Markham settled back in his chair and surveyed Vance sternly.

  “Now, “ he said, “I want to hear how you came to find those galoshes in the linen-closet. And, damn it! I don’t want any garrulous evasions or quotations out of Bartlett.”

  “I’m quite willing to unburden my soul,” smiled Vance. “It was all so dashed simple. I never put any stock in the burglar theory, and so was able to approach the problem with a virgin mind, as it were.”

  He lit a fresh cigarette and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “Perpend, Markham. On the night that Julia and Ada were shot a double set of footprints was found. It had stopped snowing at about eleven o’clock, and the tracks had been made between that hour and midnight, when the Sergeant arrived on the scene. On the night of Chester’s murder there was another set of footprints similar to the others; and they too had been made shortly after the weather had cleared. Here then, were tracks in the snow, approaching and retreating from the front door, preceding each crime; and both sets had been made after the snow had stopped falling when they would be distinctly visible and determinable. This was not a particularly striking coincidence, but it was sufficiently arresting to create a slight strain on my cortex cerebri. And the strain increased perceptibly this morning when Snitkin reported his discovery of fresh footprints on the balcony steps; for once again the same meteorological conditions had accompanied our culprit’s passion for leaving spoors. I was therefore driven to the irresistible inference, as you learned Solons put it, that the murderer, so careful and calculating about everything else, had deliberately made all these footprints for our special edification. In each instance, d’ ye see, he had chosen the only hour of the day when his tracks would not be obliterated by falling snow or confused with other tracks... Are you there?”

  “Go ahead,” said Markham. “I’m listening.”

  “To proceed, then. Another coincidence attached to these three sets of footprints. It was impossible, because of the dry, flaky nature of the snow, to determine whether the first set had originated in the house and returned there, or had first approached the house from the street and then retreated. Again, on the night of Chester’s demise, when the snow was damp and susceptible to clear impressions, the same doubt arose. The tracks to and from the house were on opposite sides of the front walk: not a single footstep overlapped! Accidental? Perhaps. But not wholly reasonable. A person walking to and from a door along a comparatively narrow pathway would almost certainly have doubled on some of his tracks. And even if he had failed to superimpose any of his footprints, the parallel spoors would have been close together. But these two lines of prints were far apart: each clung to the extreme edge of the walk, as if the person who made them was positively afraid of overlapping. Now, consider the footprints made this morning. There was a single line of them entering the house, but none coming out. We concluded that the murderer had made his escape via the front door and down the neatly swept walk; but this, after all, was only an assumption.”

  Vance sipped his coffee and inhaled a moment on his cigarette.

  “The point I’m trying to bring out is this: there is no proof whatever that all these footprints were not made by some one in the house who first went out and then returned for the express purpose of leading the police to believe that an outsider was guilty. And, on the other hand, there is evidence that the footprints actually did originate in the house; because if an outsider had made them he would have been at no pains to confuse the issue of their origin, since, in any event, they could not have been traced back farther than the street. Therefore, as a tentative starting-point, I assumed that the tracks had, in reality, been made by some one in the house.—I can’t say, of course, whether or not my layman’s logic adds lustre to the gladsome light of jurisprudence—”

  “Your reasoning is consistent as far as it goes,” cut in Markham tartly. “But it is hardly complete enough to have led you directly to the linen-closet this morning.”

  “True. But there were various contribut’ry factors. For instance, the galoshes which Snitkin found in Chester’s clothes-closet were the exact size of the prints. At first I toyed with the idea that they were the actual instruments of our unknown’s vestigial deception. But when, after they had been taken to Headquarters, another set of similar tracks appeared—to wit, the ones found this morning—I amended my theory slightly, and concluded that Chester had owned two pairs of galoshes—one that had perhaps been discarded but not thrown away. That was why I wanted to wait for Captain Jerym’s report: I was anxious to learn if the new tracks were exactly like the old ones.”

  “But even so,” interrupted Markham, “your theory that the footprints emanated from the house strikes me as being erected on pretty weak scaffolding. Were there any other indicants?”

  “I was coming to them,” replied Vance reproachfully. “But you will rush me so. Pretend that I’m a lawyer, and my summation will sound positively breathless.”

  “I’m more likely to pretend that I’m a presiding judge, and give you sus. per coll.”*

  “Ah, well.” Vance sighed and continued. “Let us consider the hypothetical intruder’s means of escape after the shooting of Julia and Ada. Sproot came into the upper hall immediately after the shot had been fired in Ada’s room; yet he heard nothing—neither footsteps in the hall nor the front door closing. And, Markham old thing, a person in galoshes going down marble steps in the dark, is no midsummer zephyr for silence. In the circumstances Sproot would have been certain to hear him making his escape. Therefore, the explanation that suggested itself to me was that he did not make his escape.”

  “And the footprints outside?”

  “Were made beforehand by some one walking to the front gate and back.—And that brings me to the night of Chester’s murder. You remember Rex’s tale of hearing a dragging noise in the hall and a door closing about fifteen minutes before the shot was fired, and Ada’s corroboration of the door-shutting part of the story? The noise, please note, was heard after it had stopped snowing—in fact, after the moon had come out. Could the noise not easily have been a person walking in galoshes, or even taking them off, after having returned from making those separated tracks to and from the gate? And might not that closing door have been the door of the linen-closet where the galoshes were being temporarily cached?”

  Markham nodded. “Yes, the sounds Rex and Ada heard might be explained that way.”

  “And this morning’s business was even plainer. There were footprints on the balcony steps, made between nine o’clock and noon. But neither of the guards saw any one enter the grounds. Moreover, Sproot wai
ted a few moments in the dining-room after the shot had been fired in Rex’s room; and if any one had come down the stairs and gone out the front door Sproot would certainly have heard him. It’s true that the murderer might have descended the front stairs as Sproot went up the servants’ stairs. But is that likely? Would he have waited in the upper hall after killing Rex, knowing that some one was likely to step out and discover him? I think not. And anyway, the guards saw no one leave the estate. Ergo, I concluded that no one came down the front stairs after Rex’s death. I assumed again that the footprints had been made at some earlier hour. This time, however, the murderer did not go to the gate and return, for a guard was there who would have seen him; and, furthermore, the front steps and the walk had been swept. So our track-maker, after having donned the galoshes, stepped out of the front door, walked round the corner of the house, mounted the balcony steps, and re-entered the upper hall by way of Ada’s room.”

  “I see.” Markham leaned over and knocked the ashes from his cigar. “Therefore, you inferred that the galoshes were still in the house.”

  “Exactly. But I’ll admit I didn’t think of the linen-closet at once. First I tried Chester’s room. Then I took a look round Julia’s chamber; and I was about to go up to the servants’ quarters when I recalled Rex’s story of the closing door. I ran my eye over all the second-story doors, and straightway tried the linen-closet—which was, after all, the most likely place for a transient occultation. And lo! there were the galoshes tucked under an old drugget. The murderer had probably hidden them there both times before, pending an opportunity of secreting them more thoroughly.”

  “But where could they have been concealed so that our searchers didn’t run across them?”

  “As to that, now, I couldn’t say. They may have been taken out of the house altogether.”

  There was a silence for several minutes. Then Markham spoke.

  “The finding of the galoshes pretty well proves your theory, Vance. But do you realize what confronts us now? If your reasoning is correct, the guilty person is someone with whom we’ve been talking this morning. It’s an appalling thought. I’ve gone over in my mind every member of that household; and I simply can’t regard any one of them as a potential mass-murderer.”

  “Sheer moral prejudice, old dear.” Vance’s voice assumed a note of raillery. “I’m a bit cynical myself, and the only person at the Greene mansion I’d eliminate as a possibility would be Frau Mannheim. She’s not sufficiently imaginative to have planned this accumulative massacre. But as regards the others, I could picture any one of ’em as being at the bottom of this diabolical slaughter. It’s a mistaken idea, don’t y’ know, to imagine that a murderer looks like a murderer. No murderer ever does. The only people who really look like murderers are quite harmless. Do you recall the mild and handsome features of the Reverend Richeson of Cambridge? Yet he gave his inamorata cyanide of potassium. The fact that Major Armstrong was a meek and gentlemanly looking chap did not deter him from feeding arsenic to his wife. Professor Webster of Harvard was not a criminal type; but the dismembered spirit of Doctor Parkman doubtless regards him as a brutal slayer. Doctor Lamson, with his philanthropic eyes and his benevolent beard, was highly regarded as a humanitarian; but he administered aconitine rather cold-bloodedly to his crippled brother-in-law. Then there was Doctor Neil Cream, who might easily have been mistaken for the deacon of a fashionable church; and the soft-spoken and amiable Doctor Waite... And the women! Edith Thompson admitted putting powdered glass in her husband’s gruel, though she looked like a pious Sunday-school teacher. Madeleine Smith certainly had a most respectable countenance. And Constance Kent was rather a beauty—a nice girl with an engaging air; yet she cut her little brother’s throat in a thoroughly brutal manner. Gabrielle Bompard and Marie Boyer were anything but typical of the donna deliquente*: but the one strangled her lover with the cord of her dressing-gown, and the other killed her mother with a cheese-knife. And what of Madame Fenayrou—?”

  “Enough!” protested Markham. “Your lecture on criminal physiognomy can go over a while. Just now I’m trying to adjust my mind to the staggering inferences to be drawn from your finding of those galoshes.” A sense of horror seemed to weigh him down. “Good God, Vance! There must be some way out of this nightmare you’ve propounded. What member of that household could possibly have walked in on Rex Greene and shot him down in broad daylight?”

  “’Pon my soul, I don’t know.” Vance himself was deeply affected by the sinister aspects of the case. “But some one in that house did it—some one the others don’t suspect.”

  “That look on Julia’s face, and Chester’s amazed expression—that’s what you mean, isn’t it? They didn’t suspect either. And they were horrified at the revelation—when it was too late. Yes, all those things fit in with your theory.”

  “But there’s one thing that doesn’t fit, old man.” Vance gazed at the table perplexedly. “Rex died peacefully, apparently unaware of his murderer. Why wasn’t there also a look of horror on his face? His eyes couldn’t have been shut when the revolver was levelled at him, for he was standing, facing the intruder. It’s inexplicable—mad!”

  He beat a nervous tattoo on the table, his brows contracted.

  “And there’s another thing, Markham, that’s incomprehensible about Rex’s death. His door into the hall was open; but nobody up-stairs heard the shot—nobody up-stairs. And yet Sproot—who was down-stairs, in the butler’s pantry behind the dining-room—heard it distinctly.”

  “It probably just happened that way,” Markham argued, almost automatically. “Sound acts fantastically sometimes.”

  Vance shook his head.

  “Nothing has ‘just happened’ in this case. There’s a terrible logic about everything—a carefully planned reason behind each detail. Nothing has been left to chance. Still, this very systematization of the crime will eventually prove the murderer’s downfall. When we find a key to any one of the anterooms, we’ll know our way into the main chamber of horrors.”

  At that moment Markham was summoned to the telephone. When he returned his expression was puzzled and uneasy.

  “It was Swacker. Von Blon is at my office now—he has something to tell me.”

  “Ah! Very interestin’,” commented Vance.

  We drove to the District Attorney’s office, and Von Blon was shown in at once.

  “I may be stirring up a mare’s nest,” he began apologetically, after he had seated himself on the edge of a chair. “But I felt I ought to inform you of a curious thing that happened to me this morning. At first I thought I would tell the police, but it occurred to me they might misunderstand; and I decided to place the matter before you to act upon as you saw fit.”

  Plainly he was uncertain as to how the subject should be broached, and Markham waited patiently with an air of polite indulgence.

  “I phoned the Greene house as soon as I made the—ah—discovery,” Von Blon went on hesitantly. “But I was informed you had left for the office; so, as soon as I had lunched, I came directly here.”

  “Very good of you, doctor,” murmured Markham.

  Again Von Blon hesitated, and his manner became exaggeratedly ingratiating.

  “The fact is, Mr. Markham, I am in the habit of carrying a rather full supply of emergency drugs in my medicine-case... ”

  “Emergency drugs?”

  “Strychnine, morphine, caffeine, and a variety of hypnotics and stimulants. I find it often convenient—”

  “And it was in connection with these drugs you wished to see me?”

  “Indirectly—yes.” Von Blon paused momentarily to arrange his words. “To-day it happened that I had in my case a fresh tube of soluble quarter-grain morphine tablets, and a Parke-Davis carton of four tubes of strychnine—thirtieths... ”

  “And what about this supply of drugs, doctor?

  “The fact is, the morphine and the strychnine have disappeared.”

  Markham bent forward, his eyes curiously anima
ted.

  “They were in my case this morning when I left my office,” Von Blon explained; “and I made only two brief calls before I went to the Greenes’. I missed the tubes when I returned to my office.”

  “And you think it improbable that the drugs were taken from your case during either of your other calls?”

  “That’s just it. At neither place was the case out of my sight for a moment.”

  “And at the Greenes’?” Markham’s agitation was growing rapidly.

  “I went directly to Mrs. Greene’s room, taking the case with me. I remained there for perhaps half an hour. When I came out—”

  “You did not leave the room during that half-hour?”

  “No... ”

  “Pardon me, doctor,” came Vance’s indolent voice; “but the nurse mentioned that you called to her to bring Mrs. Greene’s bouillon. From where did you call?”

  Von Blon nodded. “Ah, yes. I did speak to Miss Craven. I stepped to the door and called up the servants’ stairs.”

  “Quite so. And then?”

  “I waited with Mrs. Greene until the nurse came. Then I went across the hall to Sibella’s room.”

  “And your case?” interjected Markham.

  “I set it down in the hall, against the rear railing of the main stairway.”

  “And you remained in Miss Sibella’s room until Sproot called you?”

  “That is right.”

  “Then the case was unguarded in the rear of the upper hall from about eleven until you left the house?”

  “Yes. After I had taken leave of you gentlemen in the drawing-room I went upstairs and got it.”

  “And also made your adieus to Miss Sibella,” added Vance.

  Von Blon raised his eyebrows with an air of gentle surprise.

  “Naturally.”