"How do you account for Mrs. Mannheim's actions during that interview?" asked Markham. "You remember her saying it might have been she whom Ada saw in the hall."
A cloud came over Vance's face.
"I think," he said sadly, "that Frau Mannheim began to suspect her little Ada at that point. She knew the terrible history of the girl's father, and perhaps had lived in fear of some criminal outcropping in the child."
There was a silence for several moments. Each of us was busy with his own thoughts. Then Vance continued:
"After Mrs. Greene's death, only Sibella stood between Ada and her blazing goal; and it was Sibella herself who gave her the idea for a supposedly safe way to commit the final murder. Weeks ago, on a ride Van and I took with the two girls and Von Blon, Sibella's venomous pique led her to make a foolish remark about running one's victim over a precipice in a machine; and it no doubt appealed to Ada's sense of the fitness of things that Sibella should thus suggest the means of her own demise. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Ada intended, after having killed her sister, to say that Sibella had tried to murder her, but that she had suspected the other's purpose and jumped from the car in time to save herself; and that Sibella had miscalculated the car's speed and been carried over the precipice. The fact that Von Blon and Van and I had heard Sibella speculate on just such a method of murder would have given weight to Ada's story. And what a neat ending it would have made-- Sibella, the murderer, dead; the case closed; Ada, the inheritor of the Greene millions, free to do as she chose! And--'pon my soul, Markham!--it came very near succeeding."
Vance sighed, and reached for the decanter. After refilling our glasses, he settled back and smoked moodily.
"I wonder how long this terrible plot had been in preparation. We'll never know. Maybe years. There was no haste in Ada's preparations. Everything was worked out carefully; and she let circumstances--or, rather, opportunity--guide her. Once she had secured the revolver, it was only a question of waiting for a chance when she could make the footprints and be sure the gun would sink out of sight in the snow-drift on the balcony steps. Yes, the most essential condition of her scheme was the snow! ...Amazin'!"
* * * * *
There is little more to add to this record. The truth was not given out, and the case was "shelved." The following year Tobias's will was upset by the Supreme Court in Equity--that is, the twenty-five-year domiciliary clause was abrogated in view of all that had happened at the house; and Sibella came into the entire Greene fortune. How much Markham had to do with the decision, through his influence with the Administration judge who rendered it, I don't know; and naturally I have never asked. But the old Greene mansion was, as you remember, torn down shortly afterward, and the estate sold to a realty corporation.
Mrs. Mannheim, broken-hearted over Ada's death, claimed her inheritance-- which Sibella generously doubled--and returned to Germany to seek what comfort she might among the nieces and nephews with whom, according to Chester, she was constantly corresponding. Sproot went back to England. He told Vance before departing that he had long planned a cottage retreat in Surrey where he could loaf and invite his soul. I picture him now, sitting in an ivied porch overlooking Kew Gardens, reading his beloved Martial.
Doctor and Mrs. Von Blon, immediately after the court's decision relating to the will, sailed for the Riviera and spent a year's belated honeymoon there. They are now settled in Vienna, where the doctor has become a Docent at the University--his father's Alma Mater. He is, I understand, making quite a name for himself in the field of neurology.
One domestic item may be appended. Several months ago a friend of mine, returning from Vienna, brought me the news that Sibella had given birth to a son and heir. The fact, I admit, struck me as somewhat incongruous. It is difficult for me to picture Sibella in the rôle of mother. But, as one of our leading sociologists recently assured us, the modern girl harbours beneath her callous and highly sophisticated exterior an intense, age-old maternalism. "Indeed," added this eminent sociologist, "the modern girls make the best mothers." Let us sincerely hope that Sibella will confirm his generous optimism.
THE END
THE BISHOP MURDER CASE
A PHILO VANCE STORY
by
S. S. VAN DINE
1929
The Earth is a Temple where there is going on a Mystery Play, childish and poignant, ridiculous and awful enough in all conscience.--Conrad.
CONTENTS
I. "WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?"
II. ON THE ARCHERY RANGE
III. A PROPHECY RECALLED
IV. A MYSTERIOUS NOTE
V. A WOMAN'S SCREAM
VI. "'I,' SAID THE SPARROW"
VII. VANCE REACHES A CONCLUSION
VIII. ACT TWO
IX. THE TENSOR FORMULA
X. A REFUSAL OF AID
XI. THE STOLEN REVOLVER
XII. A MIDNIGHT CALL
XIII. IN THE BISHOP'S SHADOW
XIV. A GAME OF CHESS
XV. AN INTERVIEW WITH PARDEE
XVI. ACT THREE
XVII. AN ALL-NIGHT LIGHT
XVIII. THE WALL IN THE PARK
XIX. THE RED NOTE-BOOK
XX. THE NEMESIS
XXI. MATHEMATICS AND MURDER
XXII. THE HOUSE OF CARDS
XXIII. A STARTLING DISCOVERY
XXIV. THE LAST ACT
XXV. THE CURTAIN FALLS
XXVI. HEATH ASKS A QUESTION
CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK
PHILO VANCE
JOHN F.-X. MARKHAM - District Attorney of New York County.
ERNEST HEATH - Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
PROFESSOR BERTRAND DILLARD - A famous physicist.
BELLE DILLARD - His niece.
SIGURD ARNESSON - His adopted son: an associate professor of mathematics.
PYNE - The Dillard butler.
BEEDLE - The Dillard cook.
ADOLPH DRUKKER - Scientist and author.
MRS. OTTO DRUKKER - His mother.
GRETE MENZEL - The Drukker cook.
JOHN PARDEE - Mathematician and chess expert: inventor of the Pardee gambit.
J. C. ROBIN - Sportsman and champion archer.
RAYMOND SPERLING - Civil Engineer.
JOHN E. SPRIGG - Senior at Columbia University.
DR. WHITNEY BARSTEAD - An eminent neurologist.
QUINAN - Police Reporter of the World.
MADELEINE MOFFAT
CHIEF INSPECTOR O'BRIEN - Of the Police Department of New York City.
WILLIAM M. MORAN - Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.
CAPTAIN PITTS - Of the Homicide Bureau.
GUILFOYLE - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
SNITKIN - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
HENNESSEY - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
EMERY - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
BURKE - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
CAPTAIN DUBOIS - Finger-print expert.
DR. EMANUEL DOREMUS - Medical Examiner.
SWACKER - Secretary to the District Attorney.
CURRIE - Vance's valet.
THE BISHOP MURDER CASE
CHAPTER I
"WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?"
(Saturday, April 2; noon)
Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying, was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.* The orgy of horror at the old Greene mansion had been brought to its astounding close in December; and after the Christmas holidays Vance had gone to Switzerland for the winter sports. Returning to New York at the end of February he had thrown himself into some literary work he had long had in mind--the uniform translation of the principal fragments of Menander found in the Egyptian papyri during the early years of the present century; and for over a month he had devoted himself sedulously to this thankless task.
* "The Greene Murder C
ase" (Scribners 1928)
Whether or not he would have completed the translations, even had his labors not been interrupted, I do not know; for Vance was a man of cultural ardencies, in whom the spirit of research and intellectual adventure was constantly at odds with the drudgery necessary to scholastic creation. I remember that only the preceding year he had begun writing a life of Xenophon--the result of an enthusiasm inherited from his university days when he had first read the Anabasis and the Memorabilia--and had lost interest in it at the point where Xenophon's historic march led the Ten Thousand back to the sea. However, the fact remains that Vance's translation of Menander was rudely interrupted in early April; and for weeks he became absorbed in a criminal mystery which threw the entire country into a state of gruesome excitement.
This new criminal investigation, in which he acted as a kind of amicus curiae for John F.-X. Markham, the District Attorney of New York, at once became known as the Bishop murder case. The designation--the result of our journalistic instinct to attach labels to every cause célèbre--was, in a sense, a misnomer. There was nothing ecclesiastical about that ghoulish saturnalia of crime which set an entire community to reading the "Mother Goose Melodies" with fearful apprehension;* and no one of the name of Bishop was, as far as I know, even remotely connected with the monstrous events which bore that appellation. But, withal, the word "Bishop" was appropriate, for it was an alias used by the murderer for the grimmest of purposes. Incidentally it was this name that eventually led Vance to the almost incredible truth, and ended one of the most ghastly multiple crimes in police history.
* Mr. Joseph A. Margolies of Brentano's told me that for a period of several weeks during the Bishop murder case more copies of "Mother Goose Melodies" were sold than of any current novel. And one of the smaller publishing houses reprinted and completely sold out an entire edition of those famous old nursery rhymes.
The series of uncanny and apparently unrelated events which constituted the Bishop murder case and drove all thought of Menander and Greek monostichs from Vance's mind, began on the morning of April 2, less than five months after the double shooting of Julia and Ada Greene. It was one of those warm luxurious spring days which sometimes bless New York in early April; and Vance was breakfasting in his little roof garden atop his apartment in East 38th Street. It was nearly noon--for Vance worked or read until all hours, and was a late riser--and the sun, beating down from a clear blue sky, cast a mantle of introspective lethargy over the city. Vance sprawled in an easy chair, his breakfast on a low table beside him, gazing with cynical, regretful eyes down at the treetops in the rear yard.
I knew what was in his mind. It was his custom each spring to go to France; and it had long since come to him to think, as it came to George Moore, that Paris and May were one. But the great trek of the post-war American nouveaux riches to Paris had spoiled his pleasure in this annual pilgrimage; and, only the day before, he had informed me that we were to remain in New York for the summer.
For years I had been Vance's friend and legal adviser--a kind of monetary steward and agent-companion. I had quitted my father's law firm of Van Dine, Davis & Van Dine to devote myself wholly to his interests--a post I found far more congenial than that of general attorney in a stuffy office--and though my own bachelor quarters were in a hotel on the West Side, I spent most of my time at Vance's apartment.
I had arrived early that morning, long before Vance was up, and, having gone over the first-of-the-month accounts, now sat smoking my pipe idly as he breakfasted.
"Y' know, Van," he said to me, in his emotionless drawl; "the prospect of spring and summer in New York is neither excitin' nor romantic. It's going to be a beastly bore. But it'll be less annoyin' than travelin' in Europe with the vulgar hordes of tourists jostlin' one at every turn. . . . It's very distressin'."
Little did he suspect what the next few weeks held in store for him. Had he known I doubt if even the prospect of an old pre-war spring in Paris would have taken him away; for his insatiable mind liked nothing better than a complicated problem; and even as he spoke to me that morning the gods that presided over his destiny were preparing for him a strange and fascinating enigma--one which was to stir the nation deeply and add a new and terrible chapter to the annals of crime.
Vance had scarcely poured his second cup of coffee when Currie, his old English butler and general factotum, appeared at the French doors bearing a portable telephone.
"It's Mr. Markham, sir," the old man said apologetically. "As he seemed rather urgent, I took the liberty of informing him you were in." He plugged the telephone into a baseboard switch, and set the instrument on the breakfast table.
"Quite right, Currie," Vance murmured, taking off the receiver. "Anything to break this deuced monotony." Then he spoke to Markham. "I say, old man, don't you ever sleep? I'm in the midst of an omelette aux fines herbes. Will you join me? Or do you merely crave the music of my voice--?"
He broke off abruptly, and the bantering look on his lean features disappeared. Vance was a marked Nordic type, with a long, sharply chiselled face; gray, wide-set eyes; a narrow aquiline nose; and a straight oval chin. His mouth, too, was firm and clean-cut, but it held a look of cynical cruelty which was more Mediterranean than Nordic. His face was strong and attractive, though not exactly handsome. It was the face of a thinker and recluse; and its very severity--at once studious and introspective--acted as a barrier between him and his fellows.
Though he was immobile by nature and sedulously schooled in the repression of his emotions, I noticed that, as he listened to Markham on the phone that morning, he could not entirely disguise his eager interest in what was being told him. A slight frown ruffled his brow; and his eyes reflected his inner amazement. From time to time he gave vent to a murmured "Amazin'!" or "My word!" or "Most extr'ordin'ry!"--his favorite expletives--and when at the end of several minutes he spoke to Markham, a curious excitement marked his manner.
"Oh, by all means!" he said. "I shouldn't miss it for all the lost comedies of Menander. . . . It sounds mad. . . . I'll don fitting raiment immediately. . . . Au revoir."
Replacing the receiver, he rang for Currie.
"My gray tweeds," he ordered. "A sombre tie, and my black Homburg hat." Then he returned to his omelet with a preoccupied air.
After a few moments he looked at me quizzically.
"What might you know of archery, Van?" he asked.
I knew nothing of archery, save that it consisted of shooting arrows at targets, and I confessed as much.
"You're not exactly revealin', don't y' know." He lighted one of his Régie cigarettes indolently. "However, we're in for a little flutter of toxophily, it seems. I'm no leading authority on the subject myself, but I did a bit of potting with the bow at Oxford. It's not a passionately excitin' pastime--much duller than golf and fully as complicated." He smoked a while dreamily. "I say, Van; fetch me Doctor Elmer's tome on archery from the library--there's a good chap."*
* The book Vance referred to was that excellent and comprehensive treatise, "Archery," by Robert P. Elmer, M.D.
I brought the book, and for nearly half an hour he dipped into it, tarrying over the chapters on archery associations, tournaments and matches, and scanning the long tabulation of the best American scores. At length he settled back in his chair. It was obvious he had found something that caused him troubled concern and set his sensitive mind to work.
"It's quite mad, Van," he remarked, his eyes in space. "A mediaeval tragedy in modern New York! We don't wear buskins and leathern doublets, and yet--by Jove!" He suddenly sat upright. "No--no! It's absurd. I'm letting the insanity of Markham's news affect me. . . ." He drank some more coffee, but his expression told me that he could not rid himself of the idea that had taken possession of him.
"One more favor, Van," he said at length. "Fetch me my German diction'ry and Burton E. Stevenson's 'Home Book of Verse.'"
When I had brought the volumes, he glanced at one word in the dictionary, and pushed the book
from him.
"That's that, unfortunately--though I knew it all the time."
Then he turned to the section in Stevenson's gigantic anthology which included the rhymes of the nursery and of childhood. After several minutes he closed that book, too, and, stretching himself out in his chair, blew a long ribbon of smoke toward the awning overhead.
"It can't be true," he protested, as if to himself. "It's too fantastic, too fiendish, too utterly distorted. A fairy tale in terms of blood--a world in anamorphosis--a perversion of all rationality. . . . It's unthinkable, senseless, like black magic and sorcery and thaumaturgy. It's downright demented."
He glanced at his watch and, rising, went indoors, leaving me to speculate vaguely on the cause of his unwonted perturbation. A treatise on archery, a German dictionary, a collection of children's verses, and Vance's incomprehensible utterances regarding insanity and fantasy--what possible connection could these things have? I attempted to find a least common denominator, but without the slightest success. And it was no wonder I failed. Even the truth, when it came out weeks later bolstered up by an array of incontestable evidence, seemed too incredible and too wicked for acceptance by the normal mind of man.
Vance shortly broke in on my futile speculations. He was dressed for the street, and seemed impatient at Markham's delay in arriving.
"Y' know, I wanted something to interest me--a nice fascinatin' crime, for instance," he remarked; "but--my word!--I wasn't exactly longin' for a nightmare. If I didn't know Markham so well I'd suspect him of spoofing."
When Markham stepped into the roof garden a few minutes later it was only too plain that he had been in deadly earnest. His expression was sombre and troubled, and his usual cordial greeting he reduced to the merest curt formality. Markham and Vance had been intimate friends for fifteen years. Though of antipodal natures--the one sternly aggressive, brusque, forthright, and almost ponderously serious; the other whimsical, cynical, debonair, and aloof from the transient concerns of life--they found in each other that attraction of complementaries which so often forms the basis of an inseparable and enduring companionship.
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