The Kennel Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Markham stood up and walked back and forth across the room.

  “Good God!” His words were scarcely audible. “So that’s the explanation! No wonder we couldn’t understand the things that happened there that night. Unbelievable!”

  Vance had sunk back into his chair, relaxed. He took a deep inspiration, like a man who had suddenly found a friendly settlement in the midst of a hostile jungle.

  “Really, Markham,” he said with a slight upward glance, taking out his case of beloved Régies, “I’ll never forgive you for this—never! It was you who guessed the solution. And I knew it all the time, but I couldn’t correlate my knowledge.”

  Markham came to a sudden halt.

  “What do you mean by saying that I guessed the solution?”

  “Didn’t you say,” asked Vance mildly, “that the only way one could explain the circumstances was by the assumption that a dead man walked upstairs?… No, Markham, I am sure I shall never forgive you.”

  Markham sat down and muttered a disgusted oath. He smoked a while in silence.

  “The internal hemorrhage explains many things,” he admitted finally. “But I still don’t understand Brisbane’s death, and the bolted door.”

  “And yet, d’ ye see,” returned Vance, “it all fits in perfectly, now that we have the key.”

  He lay back in his chair and stretched his legs. He took several puffs on his cigarette and half closed his eyes.

  “I think, Markham, I can reconstruct the amazin’ and contradict’ry occurrences that took place in the Coe domicile last Wednesday night… I doubt if Wrede actually planned to murder Archer Coe that night. The idea had no doubt been in his mind for a long time, for he had obviously taken the precaution of securing a duplicate key to the spring lock on the rear door. But I have a feelin’ that he wished only to argue various matters out with Archer last Wednesday night before actually resorting to murder. It’s obvious that he called on Archer that night and tried to convince him that he would be the perfect mate for Hilda Lake. Archer disagreed—and disagreed violently. That was no doubt the argument that Liang overheard. I imagine that the debate reached the point where blows were struck. The poker was quite handy, don’t y’ know, and Wrede, with his tremendous sense of personal inferiority, would naturally reach for some outside agent to help him over the top. He snatched the poker and struck Archer over the head.

  “Archer fell forward against the table, upsetting it and fracturing his rib. Wrede was in a quand’ry. But again his sense of inferiority invaded him. He looked round the room quickly, saw the dagger in the cabinet, took it out and, as Archer lay on the floor, drove it into his back… The deed was done. He had vindicated himself in a physical way, and had removed all obstacles from his path. He believed he was alone in the house with Archer; but still there was the question of a suspect. Into his shrewd brain flashed the thought of Liang, whom he had always suspected of being more than a servant. He figured that if he left the Chinese dagger where it would be found in the library, Liang would be the logical suspect. He threw the dagger into the Ting yao vase. But he threw it in too hard. It broke the vase—and again Wrede was in a quand’ry. He picked up the dagger and placed it in the other vase on the table. Then he gathered up the fragments of the Ting yao, carried them through the kitchen and placed them in the garbage pail on the rear porch. The poker he had thrown back on the hearth. And he left the house through the rear entrance, passed behind the hedge in the vacant lot, unlatched the gate at the rear of his apartment house, and went to his rooms.”

  “So far, so good,” said Markham. “But what of Brisbane?”

  “Brisbane? Ah, yes. He was an unexpected element. But Wrede knew nothing about it… As I see it, Markham, Brisbane had planned to get rid of Archer that same night. His trip to Chicago was merely a blind. With his knowledge of criminology and his shrewd technical brain, he had worked out a perfectly logical means of doing away with his brother and having the crime appear a suicide. Naturally he chose Wednesday night when he knew Archer would be alone in the house. He established his alibi by having Gamble make reservations on the 5.15 train to Chicago. His plan was to go back to the house and take a later train. It was an excellent idea, and it was almost detection-proof. And he did come back to the house, Markham, with the definite intention of killing Archer…”

  “Still, I don’t see—”

  “Oh, it’s all quite simple,” Vance went on. “But before Brisbane returned that night, strange and uncanny things happened. The plot became cluttered with complications, and Brisbane, instead of creating a perfect crime, walked into a plot more diabolical than the one he himself had conceived…”

  Vance moved in his chair.

  “This is what had happened in the meantime: Archer, recovering from the blow of the poker, and not realizing that he had also been stabbed, went upstairs to his bedroom. The shades were up, and Wrede, from his own apartment, could see him across the vacant lot… No one will ever know what thoughts went on in Coe’s mind at this time. But obviously he was incensed at Wrede, and he probably sat down to write him a letter forbidding him ever to put foot in the house again. He began to feel tired—perhaps the blood had commenced to choke his lungs. The pen fell from his fingers. He made an effort to prepare himself for bed. He took off his coat and waistcoat and hung them carefully in the closet. Then he put on his dressing-gown, buttoned it, and tied the belt about him. He walked to the windows and pulled down the shades. That act took practically all of his remaining vitality. He started to get his bedroom slippers, but the black mist of death was drifting in upon him. He thought it fatigue—the result, perhaps, of the blow Wrede had struck him over the head. He sat down in his easy chair. But he never got up, Markham. He never changed his shoes. As he sat there the final inevitable fog stifled him!…”

  “Good God, Vance! I see the horror of it,” breathed Markham.

  “All these steps in that sinister situation,” Vance continued, “are clearly indicated… But think what must have gone on in Wrede’s mind when he looked out of his window and saw the man he had murdered moving about the room upstairs, arranging the papers on his desk, changing his clothes, going about his affairs as if nothing whatever had happened!”

  Vance inhaled several times on his cigarette and broke the ashes into a small tray beside him.

  “My word, Markham! Can you imagine Wrede’s emotions? He had killed a man; and yet he could look across a vacant lot and see this dead man acting as if nothing had happened. Wrede had to start all over again. It was a delicate and terrible situation. He knew that he had thrust a deadly dagger into Archer Coe’s body. But Archer was still alive—and retribution must inevitably follow. And don’t forget that the lights did not go out in Archer Coe’s room. Wrede, no doubt, frantically asked himself a thousand times what was going on behind those drawn shades. He not only feared the incalculable mystery of the situation, but, I am inclined to think, he was perturbed most by his speculation concerning the things he could not see… I wouldn’t care to put in the two hours that Wrede spent between eight o’clock and ten that night. He realized that some decision must be made—that some action must be taken. But he had nothing whatever to go on: his imagination was his only guide…”

  “And he came back!” said Markham huskily.

  “Yes,” nodded Vance, “he came back. He had to come back! But in that interim of his indecision something unforeseen and horrible had taken place. Brisbane had returned to the house—he had returned stealthily, letting himself in with his own key. He had returned to kill his brother! He looked into the library: the lights were on, but Archer was not there. He went to the drawer of the table and took out the revolver. Then he went upstairs. Perhaps he saw the light through Archer’s bedroom door. He opened the door…”

  Vance paused.

  “Y’ know, Markham, I am inclined to think that Brisbane was prepared for any emergency. He had worked out a scheme for killing Archer, placing him in his bedroom with the revolver in his han
d, and then bolting the door from the hall, so as to make it appear as suicide. And when he saw Archer sitting in his easy chair, apparently asleep, he no doubt felt that the fates were with him, that his road had been made easy. I can see him tiptoeing across the room to the easy chair where the other sat. I can see him place the revolver against Archer’s right temple and pull the trigger,—the impact of the bullet drove Archer’s head to the left. Then I can see Brisbane place the revolver in Archer’s hand and return to the door, where he carefully put in operation the mechanism he had worked out for bolting the door from the hall… My word, Markham, what a situation!—Brisbane shooting a dead man, and then elaborately setting the stage to prove that it was suicide!”

  “Good God!” breathed Markham.

  “But during this tragic farce,” Vance went on, “Wrede had arrived at a decision. He had decided to come back to Archer Coe and finish, for all time, the crime which apparently he had only started. He bethought himself of the Ting yao vase he had broken, and perhaps fearing its absence would be noted, he picked out a superficially similar vase from his own small collection and carried it back to the Coe house. The hour, I should say, was around ten o’clock… Wrede opened the gate of the rear yard, and left it ajar; and it was then that the Scottie followed him on his dark errand. He went in the rear door of the Coe house, leaving it open—and the Scottie followed. Everything was black and still. He went through the dining-room into the library, and placed his own inferior vase on the teak-wood base where the Ting yao vase had stood. He took the dagger from the vase in which he had hidden it, and moved toward the hall…”

  DIAGRAM OF THE BELLE MAISON, THE COE RESIDENCE, AND THE VACANT LOT BETWEEN

  Vance raised himself a little in his chair.

  “And when he reached the door, Markham, he saw a figure coming down the stairs from the second floor. There was a light in the library, but it was not sufficient to make possible an absolute recognition of the figure on the stairs. To Wrede that figure was Archer. (Archer and Brisbane, you’ll recall, were of the same height and general build, and they did not look dissimilar.) Wrede stood behind the portières at the library door, the dagger grasped in his hand, and waited till his opportunity came. The shadowy figure came down the stairs and walked toward the closet door at the end of the hall,—Brisbane was no doubt going back for the overcoat and hat which he had left there on coming in. But Wrede, with his inflamed imagination, assumed that Archer was preparing to leave the house to tell some one of the attack—to report him to the police, perhaps. He couldn’t be sure: he only knew that it spelled danger for himself. And he was more thoroughly determined than ever to put an end to Archer…

  “Brisbane, as I now see it, had just placed the strings, which he had used for bolting Archer’s door, in the pocket of his top-coat, when Wrede came silently upon him from behind and thrust the dagger into his back. He collapsed immediately, and Wrede pushed the body, which he thought was Archer’s, entirely into the closet and closed the door. He went back to the library; and it was at this time that he probably stumbled over the Scottie, which had followed him in. He decided that it was safest to get rid of her immediately. She may even have barked, or made some sound when he stumbled over her; and he was in no frame of mind at that moment to meet new emergencies logically. He dropped the dagger back into the vase and picked up the poker. Then he struck the Scottie over the head,—it was the simplest and most direct way of dealing with an unexpected circumstance when there was no time for thought. The presence of the dog was unexpected, incalculable…

  “There can be little doubt that the man was in a panic—and with sufficient reason. He did not even switch off the lights in the library. The whole thing was amazin’. He went home through the rear door, thinking that he had left Archer’s dead body in the coat closet. Then, when Gamble summoned him the following morning, he found that Archer was still in his bedroom, behind a bolted door! The man must have felt that the whole world had gone insane. I imagine he rushed to the hall closet, when Gamble wasn’t looking, to check his sanity, so to speak; and then he saw the dead body of Brisbane. Some of the truth, at least, must have dawned upon him. He had killed his friend—his ally—by accident! What mental torture he must have suffered! And there was also in his mind the terrible problem of Archer’s death… I wonder the man stood up so well when we arrived. The cold desperation of a final necessity, I suppose…”

  Markham moved about the room restlessly.

  “I see it all,” he muttered, as if to himself. He stopped and swung round. “But what of Wrede’s attempted murder of Grassi?”

  “That was logical and in keeping with his character,” said Vance. “Miss Lake explained it—intense jealousy of his lucky rival. Wrede thought he had successfully pulled the wool over our eyes, and the fact gave him confidence. He knew exactly where the dagger was; he knew the domestic arrangements of the Coe house; he had a key to the rear door; and he doubtless knew of the broken lock on Grassi’s door. He had probably brooded over his loss of a wealthy bride until he could no longer resist the urge to follow up his—as he thought—successful murder of Archer by the murder of Grassi. He would thus have won a complete victory over the forces that had temporarily defeated him. His frustrated ego again. And had it not been for Liang’s perspicacity—which Wrede underestimated—and the shift of Grassi’s arm, he would have succeeded.”

  “But what,” asked Markham, “first gave you the idea that Wrede had committed the murders?”

  “The Scottie, Markham,” answered Vance. “After having found she belonged to Higginbottom, I ascertained that he had given her to his inamorata who lived in the Belle Maison. And once I had followed the Scottie’s trail and knew that she belonged next door, I made a bit of an investigation. I learned from a perfectly honest Irish maid that both Higginbottom and his lady fair—a Miss Delafield—had been having a farewell dinner at the time Coe was murdered. Y’ see, I had thought perhaps that some blond lady with a Duplaix lip-stick had admitted the Scottie into the Coe house earlier in the evening. But although Miss Delafield used Duplaix lip-stick and had undoubtedly called on Archer Coe before half-past seven, it was not she who had let the Scottie in; for the little dog was in the Delafield apartment after nine o’clock that night, and had disappeared some time between then and half-past ten, at which hour the maid instituted a search for her. Moreover, I learned that the Scottie could have entered the Coe house only if some one had unlocked the gate between the Belle Maison and the vacant lot next to the Coe residence. And I further learned that there was no way for the Scottie to escape from the Belle Maison, except into the rear yard. Only some one who had unlocked the gate and opened the rear door of the Coe residence would have given her the opportunity of entering the house. And Wrede was the only person who could have done this.”

  The following year Hilda Lake and Grassi were married, and the alliance seems to have been highly successful. Vance became the owner of Miss MacTavish. He had become attached to her during the days he had nursed her back to health, and the romance (if one may call it that) between Higginbottom and Doris Delafield ran on the rocks shortly after the lady’s return from Europe. After her break with the major she showed little interest in the dog; and Higginbottom, in appreciation of some nebulous favor which he considered Vance had done him, made him a present of the bitch. Vance placed her in his kennels, but she did not seem to be happy there; and he finally took her into his apartment. He still has her, and she has been “pensioned” for life. Sometimes I think that Vance would rather part with one of his treasured Cézannes than with little Miss MacTavish.

  Footnotes

  *A. G. Bradley: “An Old Gate of England” (“The English Countryside Series”), published by Robert Scott, London, 1917.

  †Bradley, “An Old Gate of England,” p. 64.

  For more of S. S. Van Dine’s “Philo Vance” series and other “Vintage” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press, including the “Inspector Alleyn” series by Ngaio Marsh, and the �
�Henry Gamadge” series by Elizabeth Daly, please visit our website:

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  All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

  THE KENNEL MURDER CASE

  A Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” mystery

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  First print edition (Scribner’s): 1933

  Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2019

  Copyright © 1933 by Charles Scribner’s Sons

  Copyright renewed 1954 by Claire R. Wright

  All rights reserved

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-209-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Van Dine, S. S., author.

  Title: The kennel murder case / S.S. Van Dine.

  Description: New York : Felony & Mayhem Press, 2019. | “First edition (Scribner’s): 1933.” | Summary: “Given all the rich people getting bumped off in Philo Vance’s Manhattan, it’s amazing there are enough left to support the symphony. Latest up: Arthur Coe, found dead in his own locked bedroom. Suicide? The ever-perceptive Philo doesn’t buy that theory for a second. The presence in Coe’s house of a strange, prize-winning terrier only adds to the mystery, although Philo’s fabulously in-depth knowledge of dogs does not in fact solve the crime; his fabulously in-depth knowledge of the murder of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898 proves much more useful”-- Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019030864 | ISBN 9781631942013 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781631942099 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Vance, Philo (Fictitious character)--Fiction.