The Greene Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Sure thing.” Doremus was somewhat surprised by the request.

  When he had gone, Markham addressed himself to Drumm.

  “We’d like to talk to Ada now. How is she this morning?”

  “Oh, fine!” Drumm spoke with pride. “I saw her right after I’d looked at the old lady. She’s weak and a bit dried up with all the atropine I gave her, but otherwise practically normal.”

  “And she has not been told of her mother’s death?”

  “Not a word.”

  “She will have to know,” interposed Vance; “and there’s no point in keeping the fact from her any longer. It’s just as well that the shock should come when we’re all present.”

  Ada was sitting by the window when we came in, her elbows on the sill, chin in hands, gazing out into the snow-covered yard. She was startled by our entry, and the pupils of her eyes dilated, as if with sudden fright. It was plain that the experiences she had been through had created in her a state of nervous fear.

  After a brief exchange of amenities, during which both Vance and Markham strove to allay her nervousness, Markham broached the subject of the bouillon.

  “We’d give a great deal,” he said, “not to have to recall so painful an episode, but much depends on what you can tell us regarding yesterday morning.—You were in the drawing-room, weren’t you, when the nurse called down to you?”

  The girl’s lips and tongue were dry, and she spoke with some difficulty.

  “Yes. Mother had asked me to bring her a copy of a magazine, and I had just gone down-stairs to look for it when the nurse called.”

  “You saw the nurse when you came up-stairs?”

  “Yes; she was just going toward the servants’ stairway.”

  “There was no one in your room here when you entered?”

  She shook her head. “Who could have been here?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out, Miss Greene,” replied Markham gravely. “Some one certainly put the drug in your bouillon.”

  She shuddered, but made no reply.

  “Did anyone come in to see you later?” Markham continued.

  “Not a soul.”

  Heath impatiently projected himself into the interrogation.

  “And say; did you drink your soup right away?”

  “No—not right away. I felt a little chilly, and I went across the hall to Julia’s room to get an old Spanish shawl to put round me.”

  Heath made a disgusted face, and sighed noisily.

  “Every time we get going on this case,” he complained, “something comes along and sinks us.—If Miss Ada left the soup in here, Mr. Markham, while she went to get a shawl, then almost anybody coulda sneaked in and poisoned the stuff.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Ada apologized, almost as though she had taken Heath’s words as a criticism of her actions.

  “It’s not your fault, Ada,” Vance assured her. “The Sergeant is unduly depressed.—But tell me this: when you went into the hall did you see Miss Sibella’s dog anywhere around?”

  She shook her head wonderingly.

  “Why, no. What has Sibella’s dog to do with it?”

  “He probably saved your life.” And Vance explained to her how Sproot had happened to find her.

  She gave a half-breathless murmur of amazement and incredulity, and fell into an abstracted revery.

  “When you returned from your sister’s room, did you drink your bouillon at once?” Vance asked her next.

  With difficulty she brought her mind back to the question.

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t you notice a peculiar taste?”

  “Not particularly. Mother always like a lot of salt in her bouillon.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Nothing happened. Only, I began to feel funny. The back of my neck tightened up, and I got very warm and drowsy. My skin tingled all over, and my arms and legs seemed to get numb. I was terribly sleepy, and I lay back on the bed.—That’s all I remember.”

  “Another washout,” grumbled Heath.

  There was a short silence, and Vance drew his chair nearer.

  “Now, Ada,” he said, “you must brace yourself for more bad news... Your mother died during the night.”

  The girl sat motionless for a moment, and then turned to him eyes of a despairing clearness.

  “Died?” she repeated. “How did she die?”

  “She was poisoned—she took an overdose of strychnine.”

  “You mean...she committed suicide?”

  This query startled us all. It expressed a possibility that had not occurred to us. After a momentary hesitation, however, Vance slowly shook his head.

  “No, I hardly think so. I’m afraid the person who poisoned you also poisoned your mother.”

  Vance’s reply seemed to stun her. Her face grew pale, and her eyes were set in a glassy stare of terror. Then presently she sighed deeply, as if from a kind of mental depletion.

  “Oh, what’s going to happen next?...I’m—afraid!”

  “Nothing more is going to happen,” said Vance with emphasis. “Nothing more can happen. You are going to be guarded every minute. And Sibella is going this afternoon to Atlantic City for a long visit.”

  “I wish I could go away,” she breathed pathetically.

  “There will be no need of that,” put in Markham. “You’ll be safer in New York. We are going to keep the nurse here to look after you, and also put a man in the house day and night until everything is straightened out. Hemming is leaving today, but Sproot and the cook will take care of you.” He rose and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “There’s no possible way anyone can harm you now.”

  As we descended into the lower hall Sproot was just admitting Doctor Von Blon.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed, hastening toward us. “Sibella just phoned me about Mrs. Greene.” He looked truculently at Markham, his suavity for the moment forgotten. “Why wasn’t I informed, sir?”

  “I saw no necessity of bothering you, doctor,” Markham returned equably. “Mrs. Greene had been dead several hours when she was found. And we had our own doctor at hand.”

  A quick flame leaped in Von Blon’s eyes.

  “And am I to be forcibly kept from seeing Sibella?” he asked coldly. “She tells me she is leaving the city to-day, and has asked me to assist with her arrangements.”

  Markham stepped aside.

  “You are free, doctor, to do whatever you desire,” he said, a perceptible chill in his voice.

  Von Blon bowed stiffly and went up the stairs.

  “He’s sore,” grinned Heath.

  “No, Sergeant,” Vance corrected. “He’s worried—oh, deuced worried.”

  Shortly after noon that day Hemming departed forever from the Greene mansion; and Sibella took the three-fifteen o’clock train for Atlantic City. Of the original household, only Ada and Sproot and Mrs. Mannheim were left. However, Heath gave orders for Miss O’Brien to remain on duty indefinitely and keep an eye on everything that happened; and, in addition to this protection, a detective was stationed in the house to augment the nurse’s watch.

  Footnotes

  * It will be remembered that in the famous Molineux poisoning case the cyanide of mercury was administered by way of a similar drug—to wit: Bromo-Seltzer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Shadowy Figure

  (Friday, December 3; 6 p.m.)

  AT SIX O’CLOCK that evening Markham called another informal conference at the Stuyvesant Club. Not only were Inspector Moran and Heath present, but Chief Inspector O’Brien* dropped in on his way home from the office.

  The afternoon papers had been merciless in their critique of the police for its unsuccessful handling of the investigation. Markham, after consulting with Heath and Doremus, had explained the death of Mrs. Greene to the reporters as “the result of an overdose of strychnine—a stimulant she had been taking regularly under her physician’s orders.” Swacker had typed copies of the item so there would be no mistake as
to its exact wording; and the announcement ended by saying: “There is no evidence to show that the drug was not self-administered as the result of error.” But although the reporters composed their news stories in strict accord with Markham’s report, they interpolated subtle intimations of deliberate murder, so that the reader was left with little doubt as to the true state of affairs. The unsuccessful attempt to poison Ada had been kept a strict official secret. But this suppressed item had not been needed to inflame the public’s morbid imagination to an almost unprecedented degree.

  Both Markham and Heath had begun to show the strain of their futile efforts to solve the affair; and one glance at Inspector Moran, as he sank heavily into a chair beside the District Attorney, was enough to make one realize that a corroding worry had undermined his habitual equanimity. Even Vance revealed signs of tensity and uneasiness; but with him it was an eager alertness, rather than worry, that marked any deviation from normality in his attitude.

  As soon as we were assembled that evening Heath briefly epitomized the case. He went over the various lines of investigation, and enumerated the precautions that had been taken. When he had finished, and before any one could make a comment, he turned to Chief Inspector O’Brien and said:

  “There’s plenty of things, sir, we might’ve done in any ordinary case. We could’ve searched the house for the gun and the poison like the narcotic squad goes through a single room or small apartment—punching the mattresses, tearing up the carpets, and sounding the wood-work—but in the Greene house it would’ve taken a coupla months. And even if we’d found the stuff, what good would it have done us? The guy that’s tearing things wide open in that dump isn’t going to stop just because we take his dinky thirty-two away from him, or grab his poison.—After Chester or Rex was shot we could’ve arrested all the rest of the family and put ’em through a third degree. But there’s too much noise in the papers every time we give anybody the works; and it ain’t exactly healthy for us to grill a family like the Greenes. They’ve got too much money and pull; they’d have had a whole battalion of high-class lawyers smearing us with suits and injunctions and God knows what. And if we’d just held ’em as material witnesses, they’d have got out in forty-eight hours on habeas-corpus actions.—Then, again, we might’ve planted a bunch of huskies in the house. But we couldn’t keep a garrison there indefinitely, and the minute they’d have been called off, the dirty work would’ve begun.—Believe me, Inspector, we’ve been up against it good and plenty.”

  O’Brien grunted and tugged at his white cropped moustache.

  “What the Sergeant says is perfectly true,” Moran remarked. “Most of the ordinary methods of action and investigation have been denied us. We’re obviously dealing with an inside family affair.”

  “Moreover,” added Vance, “we’re dealing with an extr’ordin’rily clever plot—something that has been thought out and planned down to the minutest detail, and elaborately covered up at every point. Everything has been staked—even life itself—on the outcome. Only a supreme hatred and an exalted hope could have inspired the crimes. And against such attributes, d’ ye see, the ordin’ry means of prevention are utterly useless.”

  “A family affair!” repeated O’Brien heavily, who apparently was still pondering over Inspector Moran’s statement. “It don’t look to me as though there’s much of the family left. I’d say, on the evidence, that some outsider was trying to wipe the family out.” He gave Heath a glowering look. “What have you done about the servants? You’re not scared to monkey with them, are you? You could have arrested one of ’em a long time ago and stopped the yapping of the newspapers for a time, anyway.”

  Markham came immediately to Heath’s defense.

  “I’m wholly responsible for any seeming negligence on the Sergeant’s part in that regard,” he said with a noticeable accent of cold reproach. “As long as I have anything to say about this case no arrests are going to be made for the mere purpose of quieting unpleasant criticism.” Then his manner relaxed slightly. “There isn’t the remotest indication of guilt in connection with any of the servants. The maid Hemming is a harmless fanatic, and is quite incapable mentally of having planned the murders. I permitted her to leave the Greenes’ to-day...”

  “We know where to find her, Inspector,” Heath hastened to add by way of forestalling the other’s inevitable question.

  “As to the cook,” Markham went on; “she, too, is wholly outside of any serious consideration. She’s temperamentally unfitted to be cast in the rôle of murderer.”

  “And what about the butler?” asked O’Brien acrimoniously.

  “He’s been with the family thirty years, and was even remembered liberally in Tobias Greene’s will. He’s a bit queer, but I think if he had had any reason for destroying the Greenes he wouldn’t have waited till old age came on him.” Markham looked troubled for a moment. “I must admit, however, that there’s an atmosphere of mysterious reserve about the old fellow. He always gives me the impression of knowing far more than he admits.”

  “What you say, Markham, is true enough,” remarked Vance. “But Sproot certainly doesn’t fit this particular saturnalia of crime. He reasons too carefully; there’s an immense cautiousness about the man, and his mental outlook is highly conservative. He might stab an enemy if there was no remote chance of detection. But he lacks the courage and the imaginative resiliency that have made possible this present gory debauch. He’s too old—much too old...By Jove!”

  Vance leaned over and tapped the table with an incisive gesture.

  “That’s the thing that’s been evading me! Vitality! That’s what is at the bottom of this business—a tremendous, elastic, self-confident vitality: a supreme ruthlessness mingled with audacity and impudence—an intrepid and reckless egoism—an undaunted belief in one’s own ability. And they’re not the components of age. There’s youth in all this—youth with its ambition and venturesomeness—that doesn’t count the cost, that takes no thought of risk... No. Sproot could never qualify.”

  Moran shifted his chair uncomfortably and turned to Heath.

  “Whom did you send to Atlantic City to watch Sibella?”

  “Guilfoyle and Mallory—the two best men we’ve got.” The Sergeant smiled with a kind of cruel satisfaction. “She won’t get away. And she won’t pull anything, either.”

  “And have you extended your attention to Doctor Von Blon, by any chance?” negligently asked Vance.

  Again Heath’s canny smile appeared.

  “He’s been tailed ever since Rex was shot.”

  Vance regarded him admiringly.

  “I’m becoming positively fond of you, Sergeant,” he said; and beneath his chaffing note was the ring of sincerity.

  O’Brien leaned ponderously over the table and, brushing the ashes from his cigar, fixed a sullen look on the District Attorney.

  “What was this story you gave out to the papers, Markham? You seemed to want to imply that the old woman took the strychnine herself. Was that hogwash, or was there something in it?”

  “I’m afraid there was nothing in it, Inspector.” Markham spoke with a sense of genuine regret. “Such a theory doesn’t square with the poisoning of Ada—or with any of the rest of it, for that matter.”

  “I’m not so sure,” retorted O’Brien. “Moran here has told me that you fellows had an idea the old woman was faking her paralysis.” He rearranged his arms on the table and pointed a short thick finger at Markham. “Supposing she shot three of the children, using up all the cartridges in the revolver, and then stole the two doses of poison—one for each of the two girls left; and then supposing she gave the morphine to the younger one, and had only one dose left...” He paused and squinted significantly.

  “I see what you mean,” said Markham. “Your theory is that she didn’t count on our having a doctor handy to save Ada’s life, and that, having failed to put Ada out, she figured the game was up, and took the strychnine.”

  “That’s it!” O’Brien struck
the table with his fist. “And it makes sense. Furthermore, it means we’ve cleared up the case—see?”

  “Yes, it unquestionably makes sense.” It was Vance’s quiet, drawling voice that answered. “But forgive me if I suggest that it fits the facts much too tidily. It’s a perfect theory, don’t y’ know; it leaps to the brain, almost as though some one had planned it for our benefit. I rather fancy that we’re intended to adopt that very logical and sensible point of view. But really now, Inspector, Mrs. Greene was not the suicidal type, however murderous she may have been.”

  While Vance had been speaking, Heath had left the room. A few minutes later he returned and interrupted O’Brien in a long, ill-natured defense of his suicide theory.

  “We haven’t got to argue any more along that line,” he announced. “I’ve just had Doc Doremus on the phone. He’s finished the autopsy; and he says that the old lady’s leg muscles had wasted away—gone plumb flabby—and that there wasn’t a chance in the world of her moving her legs, let alone walking on ’em.”

  “Good God!” Moran was the first to recover from the amazement this news had caused us. “Who was it, then, that Ada saw in the hall?”

  “That’s just it!” Vance spoke hurriedly, trying to stem his rising sense of excitation. “If only we knew! That’s the answer to the whole problem. It may not have been the murderer; but the person who sat in that library night after night and read strange books by candlelight is the key to everything...”

  “But Ada was so positive in her identification,” objected Markham, in a bewildered tone.

  “She’s hardly to be blamed in the circumstances,” Vance returned. “The child had been through a frightful experience and was scarcely normal. And it is not at all unlikely that she, too, suspected her mother. If she did, what would have been more natural than for her to imagine that this shadowy figure she saw in the hall long after midnight was the actual object of her dread? It is not unusual for a person under the stress of fright to distort an object by the projection of a dominating mental image.”