The Canary Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

Markham leaned back and turned to Heath.

  “The testimony of the janitor and Jessup here,” he said, “seems to limit the situation pretty narrowly to Miss Odell’s escort. If, as seems reasonable to assume, the side door was bolted all night, and if no other caller came or went through the front door, it looks as if the man we wanted to find was the one who brought her home.”

  Heath gave a short, mirthless laugh.

  “That would be fine, sir, if something else hadn’t happened around here last night.” Then, to Jessup: “Tell the District Attorney the rest of the story about this man.”

  Markham looked toward the operator with expectant interest; and Vance, lifting himself on one elbow, listened attentively.

  Jessup spoke in a level voice, with the alert and careful manner of a soldier reporting to his superior officer.

  “It was just this, sir. When the gentleman came out of Miss Odell’s apartment at about half past eleven, he stopped at the switchboard and asked me to get him a Yellow Taxicab. I put the call through, and while he was waiting for the car, Miss Odell screamed and called for help. The gentleman turned and rushed to the apartment door, and I followed quickly behind him. He knocked; but at first there was no answer. Then he knocked again, and at the same time called out to Miss Odell and asked her what was the matter. This time she answered. She said everything was all right, and told him to go home and not to worry. Then he walked back with me to the switchboard, remarking that he guessed Miss Odell must have fallen asleep and had a nightmare. We talked for a few minutes about the war, and then the taxicab came. He said good night and went out, and I heard the car drive away.”

  It was plain to see that this epilogue of the departure of Miss Odell’s anonymous escort completely upset Markham’s theory of the case. He looked down at the floor with a baffled expression and smoked vigorously for several moments. At last he asked:

  “How long was it after this man came out of the apartment that you heard Miss Odell scream?”

  “About five minutes. I had put my connection through to the taxicab company, and it was a minute or so later that she screamed.”

  “Was the man near the switchboard?”

  “Yes, sir. In fact, he had one arm resting on it.”

  “How many times did Miss Odell scream? And just what did she say when she called for help?”

  “She screamed twice and then cried, ‘Help! Help!’”

  “And when the man knocked on the door the second time, what did he say?”

  “As near as I can recollect, sir, he said, ‘Open the door, Margaret! What’s the trouble?’”

  “And can you remember her exact words when she answered him?”

  Jessup hesitated, and frowned reflectively.

  “As I recall, she said, ‘There’s nothing the matter. I’m sorry I screamed. Everything’s all right, so please go home, and don’t worry.’... Of course, that may not be exactly what she said, but it was something very close to it.”

  “You could hear her plainly through the door, then?”

  “Oh, yes. These doors are not very thick.”

  Markham rose and began pacing meditatively. At length, halting in front of the operator, he asked another question:

  “Did you hear any other suspicious sounds in this apartment after the man left?”

  “Not a sound of any kind, sir,” Jessup declared. “Someone from outside the building, however, telephoned Miss Odell about ten minutes later, and a man’s voice answered from her apartment.”

  “What’s this!” Markham spun round, and Heath sat up at attention, his eyes wide. “Tell me every detail of that call.”

  Jessup complied unemotionally.

  “About twenty minutes to twelve a trunk light flashed on the board, and when I answered it, a man asked for Miss Odell. I plugged the connection through, and after a short wait the receiver was lifted from her phone—you can tell when a receiver’s taken off the hook, because the guide light on the board goes out—and a man’s voice answered ‘Hello.’ I pulled the listening-in key over, and, of course, didn’t hear any more.”

  There was silence in the apartment for several minutes. Then Vance, who had been watching Jessup closely during the interview, spoke.

  “By the bye, Mr. Jessup,” he asked carelessly, “were you yourself, by any chance, a bit fascinated—let us say—by the charming Miss Odell?”

  For the first time since entering the room the man appeared ill at ease. A dull flush overspread his cheeks.

  “I thought she was a very beautiful lady,” he answered resolutely.

  Markham gave Vance a look of disapproval, and then addressed himself abruptly to the operator.

  “That will be all for the moment, Jessup.”

  The man bowed stiffly and limped out. “This case is becoming positively fascinatin’,” murmured Vance, relaxing once more upon the davenport.

  “It’s comforting to know that someone’s enjoying it.” Markham’s tone was irritable. “And what, may I ask, was the object of your question concerning Jessup’s sentiments toward the dead woman?”

  “Oh, just a vagrant notion struggling in my brain,” returned Vance. “And then, y’ know, a bit of boudoir racontage always enlivens a situation, what?”

  Heath, rousing himself from gloomy abstraction, spoke up. “We’ve still got the finger-prints, Mr. Markham. And I’m thinking that they’re going to locate our man for us.”

  “But even if Dubois does identify those prints,” said Markham, “we’ll have to show how the owner of them got into this place last night. He’ll claim, of course, they were made prior to the crime.”

  “Well, it’s a sure thing,” declared Heath stubbornly, “that there was some man in here last night when Odell got back from the theatre, and that he was still here until after the other man left at half past eleven. The woman’s screams and the answering of that phone call at twenty minutes to twelve prove it. And since Doc Doremus said that the murder took place before midnight, there’s no getting away from the fact that the guy who was hiding in here did the job.”

  “That appears incontrovertible,” agreed Markham. “And I’m inclined to think it was someone she knew. She probably screamed when he first revealed himself, and then, recognizing him, calmed down and told the other man out in the hall that nothing was the matter... Later on he strangled her.”

  “And, I might suggest,” added Vance, “that his place of hiding was that clothes-press.”

  “Sure,” the Sergeant concurred. “But what’s bothering me is how he got in here. The day operator who was at the switchboard until ten last night told me that the man who called and took Odell out to dinner was the only visitor she had.”

  Markham gave a grunt of exasperation.

  “Bring the day man in here,” he ordered. “We’ve got to straighten this thing out. Somebody got in here last night, and before I leave, I’m going to find out how it was done.”

  Vance gave him a look of patronizing amusement.

  “Y’ know, Markham,” he said, “I’m not blessed with the gift of psychic inspiration, but I have one of those strange, indescribable feelings, as the minor poets say, that if you really contemplate remaining in this bestrewn boudoir till you’ve discovered how the mysterious visitor gained admittance here last night, you’d do jolly well to send for your toilet access’ries and several changes of fresh linen—not to mention your pyjamas. The chap who engineered this little soirée planned his entrance and exit most carefully and perspicaciously.”

  Markham regarded Vance dubiously but made no reply.

  Footnote

  * His full name was William Elmer Jessup, and he had been attached to the 308th Infantry of the 77th Division of the Overseas Forces.

  CHAPTER SEVEN A Nameless Visitor

  (Tuesday, September 11; 11.15 a.m.)

  HEATH HAD STEPPED out into the hall, and now returned with the day telephone operator, a sallow thin young man who, we learned, was named Spively. His almost black hair, which accentu
ated the pallor of his face, was sleeked back from his forehead with pomade; and he wore a very shallow moustache which barely extended beyond the alæ of his nostrils. He was dressed in an exaggeratedly dapper fashion, in a dazzling chocolate-colored suit cut very close to his figure, a pair of cloth-topped buttoned shoes, and a pink shirt with a stiff turnover collar to match. He appeared nervous, and immediately sat down in the wicker chair by the door, fingering the sharp creases of his trousers, and running the tip of his tongue over his lips.

  Markham went straight to the point.

  “I understand you were at the switchboard yesterday afternoon and last night until ten o’clock. Is that correct?”

  Spively swallowed hard and nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”

  “What time did Miss Odell go out to dinner?”

  “About seven o’clock. I’d just sent to the restaurant next door for some sandwiches—”

  “Did she go alone?” Markham interrupted his explanation.

  “No. A fella called for her.”

  “Did you know this ‘fella’?”

  “I’d seen him a couple of times calling on Miss Odell, but I didn’t know who he was.”

  “What did he look like?” Markham’s question was uttered with hurried impatience.

  Spively’s description of the girl’s escort tallied with Jessup’s description of the man who had accompanied her home, though Spively was more voluble and less precise than Jessup had been. Patently, Miss Odell had gone out at seven and returned at eleven with the same man.

  “Now,” resumed Markham, putting an added stress on his words, “I want to know who else called on Miss Odell between the time she went out to dinner and ten o’clock when you left the switchboard.”

  Spively was puzzled by the question, and his thin arched eyebrows lifted and contracted.

  “I—don’t understand,” he stammered. “How could any one call on Miss Odell when she was out?”

  “Someone evidently did,” said Markham. “And he got into her apartment and was there when she returned at eleven.”

  The youth’s eyes opened wide, and his lips fell apart.

  “My God, sir!” he exclaimed. “So that’s how they murdered her!—laid in wait for her!...” He stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing his own proximity to the mysterious chain of events that had led up to the crime. “But nobody got into her apartment while I was on duty,” he blurted, with frightened emphasis. “Nobody! I never left the board from the time she went out until quitting time.”

  “Couldn’t any one have come in the side door?”

  “What! Was it unlocked?” Spively’s tone was startled. “It never is unlocked at night. The janitor bolts it when he leaves at six.”

  “And you didn’t unbolt it last night for any purpose? Think!”

  “No, sir, I didn’t!” He shook his head earnestly.

  “And you are positive that no one got into the apartment through the front door after Miss Odell left?”

  “Positive! I tell you I didn’t leave the board the whole time, and nobody could’ve got by me without my knowing it. There was only one person that called and asked for her—”

  “Oh! So someone did call!” snapped Markham. “When was it? And what happened?—Jog your memory before you answer.”

  “It wasn’t anything important,” the youth assured him, genuinely frightened. “Just a fella who came in and rang her bell and went right out again.”

  “Never mind whether it was important or not.” Markham’s tone was cold and peremptory. “What time did he call?”

  “About half past nine.”

  “And who was he?”

  “A young fella I’ve seen come here several times to see Miss Odell. I don’t know his name.”

  “Tell me exactly what took place,” pursued Markham.

  Again Spively swallowed hard and wetted his lips.

  “It was like this,” he began, with effort. “The fella came in and started walking down the hall and I said to him, ‘Miss Odell isn’t in.’ But he kept on going and said, ‘Oh, well, I’ll ring the bell anyway to make sure.’ A telephone call came through just then, and I let him go on. He rang the bell and knocked on the door, but of course there wasn’t any answer; and pretty soon he came on back and said, ‘I guess you were right.’ Then he tossed me half a dollar and went out.”

  “You actually saw him go out?” There was a note of disappointment in Markham’s voice.

  “Sure, I saw him go out. He stopped just inside the front door and lit a cigarette. Then he opened the door and turned toward Broadway.”

  “‘One by one the rosy petals fall,’” came Vance’s indolent voice. “A most amusin’ situation!”

  Markham was loath to relinquish his hope in the criminal possibilities of this one caller who had come and gone at half past nine.

  “What was this man like?” he asked. “Can you describe him?”

  Spively sat up straight, and when he answered, it was with an enthusiasm that showed he had taken special note of the visitor.

  “He was good-looking, not so old—maybe thirty. And he had on a full-dress suit and patent-leather pumps, and a pleated silk shirt—”

  “What, what?” demanded Vance, in simulated unbelief, leaning over the back of the davenport. “A silk shirt with evening dress! Most extr’ordin’ry!”

  “Oh, a lot of the best dressers are wearing them,” Spively explained, with condescending pride. “It’s all the fashion for dancing.”

  “You don’t say—really!” Vance appeared dumbfounded. “I must look into this... And, by the bye, when this Beau Brummel of the silk shirt paused by the front door, did he take his cigarette from a long flat silver case carried in his lower waistcoat pocket?”

  The youth looked at Vance in admiring astonishment.

  “How did you know?” he exclaimed.

  “Simple deduction,” Vance explained, resuming his recumbent posture. “Large metal cigarette cases carried in the waistcoat pocket somehow go with silk shirts for evening wear.”

  Markham, clearly annoyed at the interruption, cut in sharply with a demand for the operator to proceed with his description.

  “He wore his hair smoothed down,” Spively continued, “and you could see it was kind of long; but it was cut in the latest style. And he had a small waxed moustache; and there was a big carnation in the lapel of his coat, and he had on chamois gloves...”

  “My word!” murmured Vance. “A gigolo!”

  Markham, with the incubus of the night clubs riding him heavily, frowned and took a deep breath. Vance’s observation evidently had launched him on an unpleasant train of thought.

  “Was this man short or tall?” he asked next.

  “He wasn’t so tall—about my height,” Spively explained. “And he was sort of thin.”

  There was an easily recognizable undercurrent of admiration in his tone, and I felt that this youthful telephone operator had seen in Miss Odell’s caller a certain physical and sartorial ideal. This palpable admiration, coupled with the somewhat outré clothes affected by the youth, permitted us to read between the lines of his remarks a fairly accurate description of the man who had unsuccessfully rung the dead girl’s bell at half past nine the night before.

  When Spively had been dismissed, Markham rose and strode about the room, his head enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke, while Heath sat stolidly watching him, his brows knit.

  Vance stood up and stretched himself.

  “The absorbin’ problem, it would seem, remains in statu quo,” he remarked airily. “How, oh how, did the fair Margaret’s executioner get in?”

  “You know, Mr. Markham,” rumbled Heath sententiously, “I’ve been thinking that the fellow may have come here earlier in the afternoon—say, before that side door was locked. Odell herself may have let him in and hidden him when the other man came to take her to dinner.”

  “It looks that way,” Markham admitted. “Bring the maid in here again, and we’ll see what we can find out.”
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  When the woman had been brought in, Markham questioned her as to her actions during the afternoon, and learned that she had gone out at about four to do some shopping and had returned about half past five.

  “Did Miss Odell have any visitor with her when you got back?”

  “No, sir,” was the prompt answer. “She was alone.”

  “Did she mention that any one had called?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Now,” continued Markham, “could any one have been hidden in this apartment when you went home at seven?”

  The maid was frankly astonished, and even a little horrified.

  “Where could any one hide?” she asked, looking round the apartment.

  “There are several possible places,” Markham suggested: “in the bathroom, in one of the clothes-closets, under the bed, behind the window draperies...”

  The woman shook her head decisively. “No one could have been hidden,” she declared. “I was in the bathroom half a dozen times, and I got Miss Odell’s gown out of the clothes-closet in the bedroom. As soon as it began to get dark, I drew all the window shades myself. And as for the bed, it’s built almost down to the floor; no one could squeeze under it.” (I glanced closely at the bed and realized that this statement was quite true.)

  “What about the clothes-closet in this room?” Markham put the question hopefully, but again the maid shook her head.

  “Nobody was in there. That’s where I keep my own hat and coat, and I took them out myself when I was getting ready to go. I even put away one of Miss Odell’s old dresses in that closet before I left.”

  “And you are absolutely certain,” reiterated Markham, “that no one could have been hidden anywhere in these rooms at the time you went home?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “Do you happen to remember if the key of this clothes-closet was on the inside or the outside of the lock when you opened the door to get your hat?”

  The woman paused, and looked thoughtfully at the closet door.

  “It was on the outside, where it always was,” she announced, after several moments’ reflection. “I remember because it caught in the chiffon of the old dress I put away.”