The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Heath stared at him with gaping eyes.

  “You mean her gun went outa the window the same like that guy’s gun went over the bridge?”

  “There can be no doubt about it. There was no other place for the gun to go. The window, I learned from Sproot, was open a foot, and Ada stood before the window when she shot herself. Returning from Julia’s room she attached a cord to the revolver with a weight of some kind on the other end, and hung the weight out of the window. When her hand released the weapon it was simply drawn over the sill and disappeared in the drift of soft snow on the balcony steps. And there is where the importance of the weather came in. Ada’s plan needed an unusual amount of snow; and the night of November 8 was ideal for her grisly purpose.”

  “My God, Vance!” Markham’s tone was strained and unnatural. “This thing begins to sound more like a fantastic nightmare than a reality.”

  “Not only was it a reality, Markham,” said Vance gravely, “but it was an actual duplication of reality. It had all been done before and duly recorded in Gross’s treatise, with names, dates, and details.”

  “Hell! No wonder we couldn’t find the gun.” Heath spoke with awed disgust. “And what about the footprints, Mr. Vance? I suppose she faked ’em all.”

  “Yes, Sergeant—with Gross’s minute instructions and the footprint forgeries of many famous criminals to guide her, she faked them. As soon as it had stopped snowing that night, she slipped downstairs, put on a pair of Chester’s discarded galoshes, and walked to the front gate and back. Then she hid the galoshes in the library.”

  Vance turned once more to Gross’s manual.

  “There’s everything here that one could possibly want to know about the making and detection of footprints, and—what is more to the point—about the manufacturing of footprints in shoes too large for one’s feet.—Let me translate a short passage: ‘The criminal may intend to cast suspicion upon another person, especially if he foresees that suspicion may fall upon himself. In this case he produces clear footprints which, so to speak, leap to the eyes, by wearing shoes which differ essentially from his own. One may often in this way, as has been proved by numerous experiments, produce footprints which deceive perfectly.’...And here at the end of the paragraph Gross refers specifically to galoshes—a fact which very likely gave Ada her inspiration to use Chester’s overshoes. She was shrewd enough to profit by the suggestions in this passage.”

  “And she was shrewd enough to hoodwink all of us when we questioned her,” commented Markham bitterly.

  “True. But that was because she had a folie de grandeur,* and lived the story. Moreover, it was all based on fact; its details were grounded in reality. Even the shuffling sound she said she heard in her room was an imaginative projection of the actual shuffling sound she made when she walked in Chester’s huge galoshes. Also, her own shuffling, no doubt, suggested to her how Mrs. Greene’s footsteps would have sounded had the old lady regained the use of her legs. And I imagine it was Ada’s original purpose to cast a certain amount of suspicion on Mrs. Greene from the very beginning. But Sibella’s attitude during that first interview caused her to change her tactics. As I see it, Sibella was suspicious of little sister, and talked the situation over with Chester, who may also have had vague misgivings about Ada. You remember his sub-rosa* chat with Sibella when he went to summon her to the drawing-room. He was probably informing her that he hadn’t yet made up his mind about Ada, and was advising her to go easy until there was some specific proof. Sibella evidently agreed, and refrained from any direct charge until Ada, in telling her grotesque fairy-tale about the intruder, rather implied it was a woman’s hand that had touched her in the dark. That was too much for Sibella, who thought Ada was referring to her; and she burst forth with her accusation, despite its seeming absurdity. The amazing thing about it was that it happened to be the truth. She named the murderer and stated a large part of the motive before any of us remotely guessed the truth, even though she did back down and change her mind when the inconsistency of it was pointed out to her. And she really did see Ada in Chester’s room looking for the revolver.”

  Markham nodded.

  “It’s astonishing. But after the accusation, when Ada knew that Sibella suspected her, why didn’t she kill Sibella next?”

  “She was too canny. It would have tended to give weight to Sibella’s accusation. Oh, Ada played her hand perfectly.”

  “Go on with the story, sir,” urged Heath, intolerant of these side issues.

  “Very well, Sergeant.” Vance shifted more comfortably into his chair. “But first we must revert to the weather; for the weather ran like a sinister motif through all that followed. The second night after Julia’s death it was quite warm, and the snow had melted considerably. That was the night chosen by Ada to retrieve the gun. A wound like hers rarely keeps one in bed over forty-eight hours; and Ada was well enough on Wednesday night to slip into a coat, step out on the balcony, and walk down the few steps to where the gun lay hidden. She merely brought it back and took it to bed with her—the last place any one would have thought to look for it. Then she waited patiently for the snow to fall again—which it did the next night, stopping, as you may remember, about eleven o’clock. The stage was set. The second act of the tragedy was about to begin...

  “Ada rose quietly, put on her coat, and went down to the library. Getting into the galoshes, she again walked to the front gate and back. Then she went directly up-stairs so that her tracks would show on the marble steps, and hid the galoshes temporarily in the linen-closet. That was the shuffling sound and the closing door that Rex heard a few minutes before Chester was shot. Ada, you recall, told us afterward she had heard nothing; but when we repeated Rex’s story to her she became frightened and conveniently remembered having heard a door close. My word! That was a ticklish moment for her. But she certainly carried it off well. And I can now understand her obvious relief when we showed her the pattern of the footprints and let her think we believed the murderer came from outside... Well, after she had removed the galoshes and put them in the linen-closet, she took off her coat, donned a dressing-gown, and went to Chester’s room—probably opened the door without knocking, and went in with a friendly greeting. I picture her as sitting on the arm of Chester’s chair, or the edge of the desk, and then, in the midst of some trivial remark, drawing the revolver, placing it against his breast, and pulling the trigger before he had time to recover from his horrified astonishment. He moved instinctively, though, just as the weapon exploded—which would account for the diagonal course of the bullet. Then Ada returned quickly to her own room and got into bed. Thus was another chapter written in the Greene tragedy.”

  “Did it strike you as strange,” asked Markham, “that Von Blon was not at his office during the commission of either of the crimes?”

  “At first—yes. But, after all, there was nothing unusual in the fact that a doctor should have been out at that time of night.”

  “It’s easy enough to see how Ada got rid of Julia and Chester,” grumbled Heath. “But what stops me is how she murdered Rex.”

  “Really, y’ know, Sergeant,” returned Vance, “that trick of hers shouldn’t cause you any perplexity. I’ll never forgive myself for not having guessed it long ago.—Ada certainly gave us enough clews to work on. But, before I describe it to you, let me recall a certain architectural detail of the Greene mansion. There is a Tudor fireplace, with carved wooden panels, in Ada’s room, and another fireplace—a duplicate of Ada’s—in Rex’s room; and these two fireplaces are back to back on the same wall. The Greene house, as you know, is very old, and at some time in the past—perhaps when the fireplaces were built—an aperture was made between the two rooms, running from one of the panels in Ada’s mantel to the corresponding panel in Rex’s mantel. This miniature tunnel is about six inches square—the exact size of the panels—and a little over two feet long, or the depth of the two mantels and the wall. It was originally used, I imagine, for private communication b
etween the two rooms. But that point is immaterial. The fact remains that such a shaft exists—I verified it to-night on my way downtown from the hospital. I might also add that the panel at either end of the shaft is on a spring hinge, so that when it is opened and released it closes automatically, snapping back into place without giving any indication that it is anything more than a solid part of the woodwork—”

  “I get you!” exclaimed Heath, with the excitement of satisfaction. “Rex was shot by the old man-killing safe idea: the burglar opens the safe door and gets a bullet in his head from a stationary gun.”

  “Exactly. And the same device has been used in scores of murders. In the early days out West an enemy would go to a rancher’s cabin during the tenant’s absence, hang a shotgun from the ceiling over the door, and tie one end of a string to the trigger and the other end to the latch. When the rancher returned—perhaps days later—his brains would be blown out as he entered his cabin; and the murderer would, at the time, be in another part of the country.”

  “Sure!” The Sergeant’s eyes sparkled. “There was a shooting like that in Atlanta two years ago—Boscomb was the name of the murdered man. And in Richmond, Virginia—”

  “There have been many instances of it, Sergeant. Gross quotes two famous Austrian cases, and also has something to say about this method in general.”

  Again he opened the “Handbuch.”

  “On page 943 Gross remarks: ‘The latest American safety devices have nothing to do with the safe itself, and can, in fact, be used with any receptacle. They act through chemicals or automatic firing devices, and their object is to make the presence of a human being who illegally opens the safe impossible on physical grounds. The judicial question would have to be decided whether one is legally entitled to kill a burglar without further ado or damage his health. However, a burglar in Berlin in 1902 was shot through the forehead by a self-shooter attached to a safe in an exporting house. This style of self-shooter has also been used by murderers. A mechanic, G. Z., attached a pistol in a china-closet, fastening the trigger to the catch, and thus shot his wife when he himself was in another city. R. C., a merchant of Budapest, fastened a revolver in a humidor belonging to his brother, which, when the lid was opened, fired and sent a bullet into his brother’s abdomen. The explosion jerked the box from the table, and thus exposed the mechanism before the merchant had a chance to remove it.’...In both these latter cases Gross gives a detailed description of the mechanisms employed. And it will interest you, Sergeant—in view of what I am about to tell you—to know that the revolver in the china-closet was held in place by a Stiefel-knecht, or bootjack.”

  He closed the volume but held it on his lap.

  “There, unquestionably, is where Ada got the suggestion for Rex’s murder. She and Rex had probably discovered the hidden passageway between their rooms years ago. I imagine that as children—they were about the same age, don’t y’ know,—they used it as a secret means of correspondence. This would account for the name by which they both knew it—‘our private mail-box.’ And, given this knowledge between Ada and Rex, the method of the murder becomes perfectly clear. To-night I found an old-fashioned bootjack in Ada’s clothes-closet—probably taken from Tobias’s library. Its width, overall, was just six inches, and it was a little less than two feet long—it fitted perfectly into the communicating cupboard. Ada, following Gross’s diagram, pressed the handle of the gun tightly between the tapering claws of the bootjack, which would have held it like a vise; then tied a string to the trigger, and attached the other end to the inside of Rex’s panel, so that when the panel was opened wide the revolver, being on a hair-trigger, would discharge straight along the shaft and inevitably kill any one looking into the opening. When Rex fell with a bullet in his forehead the panel flapped back into place on its spring hinge; and a second later there was no visible evidence whatever pointing to the origin of the shot. And here we also have the explanation for Rex’s calm expression of unawareness. When Ada returned with us from the District Attorney’s office, she went directly to her room, removed the gun and the bootjack, hid them in her closet, and came down to the drawing-room to report the foot-tracks on her carpet—foot-tracks she herself had made before leaving the house. It was just before she came down-stairs, by the way, that she stole the morphine and strychnine from Von Blon’s case.”

  “But, my God, Vance!” said Markham. “Suppose her mechanism had failed to work. She would have been in for it then.”

  “I hardly think so. If, by any remote chance, the trap had not operated or Rex had recovered, she could easily have put the blame on some one else. She had merely to say she had secreted the diagram in the chute and that this other person had prepared the trap later on. There would have been no proof of her having set the gun.”

  “What about that diagram, sir?” asked Heath.

  For answer Vance again took up the second volume of Gross and, opening it, extended it toward us. On the right-hand page were a number of curious line-drawings, which I reproduce here.

  “There are the three stones, and the parrot, and the heart, and even your arrow, Sergeant. They’re all criminal graphic symbols; and Ada simply utilized them in her description. The story of her finding the paper in the hall was a pure fabrication, but she knew it would pique our curiosity. The truth is, I suspected the paper of being faked by some one, for it evidently contained the signs of several types of criminal, and the symbols were meaninglessly jumbled. I rather imagined it was a false clew deliberately placed in the hall for us to find—like the foot-prints; but I certainly didn’t suspect Ada of having made up the tale. Now, however, as I look back at the episode it strikes me as deuced queer that she shouldn’t have brought so apparently significant a paper to the office. Her failure to do so was neither logical nor reasonable; and I ought to have been suspicious. But—my word!—what was one illogical item more or less in such a mélange of inconsistencies? As it happened, her decoy worked beautifully, and gave her the opportunity to telephone Rex to look into the chute. But it didn’t really matter. If the scheme had fallen that morning, it would have been successful later on. Ada was highly persevering.”

  “You think then,” put in Markham, “that Rex really heard the shot in Ada’s room that first night, and confided in her?”

  “Undoubtedly. That part of her story was true enough. I’m inclined to think that Rex heard the shot and had a vague idea Mrs. Greene had fired it. Being rather close to his mother temperamentally, he said nothing. Later he voiced his suspicions to Ada; and that confession gave her the idea for killing him—or, rather, for perfecting the technic she had already decided on; for Rex would have been shot through the secret cupboard in any event. But Ada now saw a way of establishing a perfect alibi for the occasion; although even her idea of being actually with the police when the shot was fired was not original. In Gross’s chapter on alibis there is much suggestive material along that line.”

  Heath sucked his teeth wonderingly.

  “I’m glad I don’t run across many of her kind,” he remarked.

  “She was her father’s daughter,” said Vance. “But too much credit should not be given her, Sergeant. She had a printed and diagrammed guide for everything. There was little for her to do but follow instructions and keep her head. And as for Rex’s murder, don’t forget that, although she was actually in Mr. Markham’s office at the time of the shooting, she personally engineered the entire coup. Think back. She refused to let either you or Mr. Markham come to the house, and insisted upon visiting the office. Once there, she told her story and suggested that Rex be summoned immediately. She even went so far as to plead with us to call him by phone. Then, when we had complied, she quickly informed us of the mysterious diagram, and offered to tell Rex exactly where she had hidden it, so he could bring it with him. And we sat there calmly, listening to her send Rex to his death! Her actions at the Stock Exchange should have given me a hint; but I confess I was particularly blind that morning. She was in a state of
high nervous excitement; and when she broke down and sobbed on Mr. Markham’s desk after he had told her of Rex’s death, her tears were quite real—only, they were not for Rex; they were the reaction from that hour of terrific tension.”

  “I begin to understand why no one up-stairs heard the shot,” said Markham. “The revolver detonating in the wall, as it were, would have been almost completely muffled. But why should Sproot have heard it so distinctly down-stairs?”

  “You remember there was a fireplace in the living-room directly beneath Ada’s—Chester once told us it was rarely lighted because it wouldn’t draw properly—and Sproot was in the butler’s pantry just beyond. The sound of the report went downward through the flue and, as a result, was heard plainly on the lower floor.”

  “You said a minute ago, Mr. Vance,” argued Heath, “that Rex maybe suspected the old lady. Then why should he have accused Von Blon the way he did that day he had a fit?”

  “The accusation primarily, I think, was a sort of instinctive effort to drive the idea of Mrs. Greene’s guilt from his own mind. Then again, as Von Blon explained, Rex was frightened after you had questioned him about the revolver, and wanted to divert suspicion from himself.”