The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  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 accusations. 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 anyone 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 upstairs 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 afterwards 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 clues 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 fire-place, with carved wooden panels, in Ada’s room, and another fire-place—a duplicate of Ada’s in Rex’s room; and these two fire-places 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 fire-places 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 between the two rooms. But that point is immaterial. The fact remains that such a shaft exists—I verified it tonight 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 shot-gun 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, Va.”

  “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, secured 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.’73… 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 Stiefelknecht, 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 passage-way 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 mailbox.’ And, given this knowledge between Ada and Rex, the method of the murder becomes perfectly clear. Tonight I found an old-fashioned boot-jack in Ada’s clothes-closet—probably taken from Tobias’s library. Its width, over-all, 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 vice; 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 anyone 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 downstairs, 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 someone 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.

  “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 someone, for it evidently contained the signs of several types of criminal, and the symbols were meaninglessly jumbled. I rather imagined it was a false clue deliberately placed in the hall for us to find—like the footprints; 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 through 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 technique 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 to 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 upstairs 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 downstairs?”

  “You remember there was a fire-place 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.”

  “Get on with the story of Ada’s plot, Vance.” This time it was Markham who was impatient.

  “The rest seems pretty obvious, don’t y’ know. It was unquestionably Ada who was listening at the library door the afternoon we were there. She realized we had found the books and galoshes; and she had to think fast. So, when we came out, she told us the dramatic yarn of having seen her mother walking, which was sheer moonshine. She had run across those books on paralysis, d’ ye see, and they had suggested to her the possibility of focusing suspicion on Mrs. Greene—the chief object of her hate. It is probably true, as Von Blon said, that the two books do not deal with actual hysterical paralysis and somnambulism, but they no doubt contain references to these types of paralysis. I rather think Ada had intended all along to kill the old lady last and have it appear as the suicide of the murderer. But the proposed examination by Oppenheimer changed all that. She learned of the examination when she heard Von Blon apprise Mrs. Greene of it on his morning visit; and, having told us of that mythical midnight promenade, she couldn’t delay matters any longer. The old lady had to die—before Oppenheimer arrived. And half an hour later Ada took the morphine. She feared to give Mrs. Greene the strychnine at once lest it appear suspicious…”

  “That’s where those books on poisons come in, isn’t it, Mr. Vance?” interjected Heath. “When Ada had decided to use poison on some of the family, she got all the dope she needed on the subject outa the library.”

  “Precisely. She herself took just enough morphine to render her unconscious-probably about two grains. And to make sure she would get immediate assistance she devised the simple trick of having Sibella’s dog appear to give the alarm. Incidentally, this trick cast suspicion on Sibella. After Ada had swallowed the morphine, she merely waited until she began to feel drowsy, pulled the bell-cord, caught the tassel in the dog’s teeth, and lay back. She counterfeited a good deal of her illness; but Drumm couldn’t have detected her malingering even if he had been as great a doctor as he wanted us to believe; for the symptoms for all doses of morphine taken by mouth are practically the same during the first half-hour. And, once she was on her feet, she had only to watch for an opportunity of giving the strychnine to Mrs. Greene…”

  “It all seems too cold-blooded to be real,” murmured Markham.

  “And yet there has been any number of precedents for Ada’s actions. Do you recall the mass murders of those three nurses, Madame Jegado, Frau Zwanzigger, and Vrouw Van der Linden? And there was Mrs. Belle Gunness, the female Bluebeard; and Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, the Reading baby-farmer; and Mrs. Pearcey. Cold-blooded? Yes! But in Ada’s case there was passion too. I’m inclined to believe that it takes a particularly hot flame—a fire at white heat, in fact—to carry the human heart through such a Gethsemane. However that may be, Ada watched for her chance to poison Mrs. Greene, and found it that night. The nurse went to the third floor to prepare for bed between eleven and
eleven-thirty; and during that half-hour Ada visited her mother’s room. Whether she suggested the citro- carbonate or Mrs. Greene herself asked for it, we’ll never know. Probably the former, for Ada had always given it to her at night. When the nurse came downstairs again Ada was already back in bed, apparently asleep, and Mrs. Greene was on the verge of her first—and, let us hope, her only— convulsion.”

  “Doremus’s post-mortem report must have given her a terrific shock,” commented Markham.