The “Canary” Murder Case
by S. S. Van Dine
Contents
I. The “Canary”
II. Footprints in the Snow
III. The Murder
IV. The Print of a Hand
V. The Bolted Door
VI. A Call for Help
VII. A Nameless Visitor
VIII. The Invisible Murderer
IX. The Pack in Full Cry
X. A Forced Interview
XI. Seeking Information
XII. Circumstantial Evidence
XIII. An Erstwhile Gallant
XIV. Vance Outlines a Theory
XV. Four Possibilities
XVI. Significant Disclosures
XVII. Checking an Alibi
XVIII. The Trap
XIX. The Doctor Explains
XX. A Midnight Witness
XXI. A Contradiction in Dates
XXII. A Telephone Call
XXIII. The Ten O’Clock Appointment
XXIV. An Arrest
XXV. Vance Demonstrates
XXVI. Reconstructing the Crime
XXVII. A Game of Poker
XXVIII. The Guilty Man
XXIX. Beethoven’s “Andante”
XXX. The End
First appearances deceive many: the
intelligence alone perceives what has been
carefully hidden in the recesses of the mind.
—Phædrus.
Introductory
For many years I was the personal attorney and constant companion of
Mr. Philo Vance; and this period covered the four years during which
Mr. John F.-X. Markham, Vance’s closest friend, was District Attorney
of New York. As a result it was my privilege to be a spectator of what
I believe was the most amazing series of criminal cases that ever
passed before the eyes of a young lawyer. Indeed, the grim dramas I
witnessed during that period constitute one of the most astonishing
secret documents in American police history.
Of these dramas Vance was the central character. By an analytical and
interpretative process which, as far as I know, has never before been
applied to criminal activities, he succeeded in solving many of the
important crimes on which both the police and the District Attorney’s
office had hopelessly fallen down.
Due to my peculiar relations with Vance it happened that not only did
I participate in all the cases with which he was connected, but I was
also present at most of the informal discussions concerning them which
took place between him and the District Attorney; and, being of
methodical temperament, I kept a complete record of them. It is
fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and
transcription, for now that circumstances have rendered possible my
making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and
with all their various sidelights and succeeding steps.
In another volume—“The Benson Murder Case”—I have related how Vance
happened to become involved in criminal investigation, and have also
set forth the unique analytic methods of crime detection by which he
solved the problem of Alvin Benson’s mysterious murder.
The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the brutal
murder of Margaret Odell—a _cause célèbre_ which came to be known as
the “Canary” murder. The strangeness, the daring, the seeming
impenetrability of the crime marked it as one of the most singular and
astonishing cases in New York’s police annals; and had it not been for
Philo Vance’s participation in its solution, I firmly believe it would
have remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country.
S. S. Van Dine.
New York.
Characters of the Book
Philo Vance
John F.-X. Markham
District Attorney of New York County.
Margaret Odell (The “Canary”)
Famous Broadway beauty and ex-_Follies_ girl, who was mysteriously
murdered in her apartment.
Amy Gibson
Margaret Odell’s maid.
Charles Cleaver
A man-about-town.
Kenneth Spotswoode
A manufacturer.
Louis Mannix
An importer.
Dr. Ambroise Lindquist
A fashionable neurologist.
Tony Skeel
A professional burglar.
William Elmer Jessup
Telephone operator.
Harry Spively
Telephone operator.
Alys La Fosse
A musical-comedy actress.
Wiley Allen
A gambler.
Potts
A street-cleaner.
Amos Feathergill
Assistant District Attorney.
William M. Moran
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.
Ernest Heath
Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Guilfoyle
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Tracy
Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Deputy-Inspector Conrad Brenner
Burglar-tools expert.
Captain Dubois
Finger-print expert.
Detective Bellamy
Finger-print expert.
Peter Quackenbush
Official photographer.
Dr. Doremus
Medical Examiner.
Swacker
Secretary to the District Attorney.
Currie
Vance’s valet.
CHAPTER I.
The “Canary”
In the offices of the Homicide Bureau of the Detective Division of the
New York Police Department, on the third floor of the Police
Headquarters building in Center Street, there is a large steel filing
cabinet; and within it, among thousands of others of its kind, there
reposes a small green index-card on which is typed: “_ODELL, MARGARET.
184 West 71st Street. Sept. 10. Murder: Strangled about 11 p. m.
Apartment ransacked. Jewelry stolen. Body found by Amy Gibson, maid._”
Here, in a few commonplace words, is the bleak, unadorned statement of
one of the most astonishing crimes in the police annals of this
country—a crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, so
unique, that for many days the best minds of the Police Department and
the District Attorney’s office were completely at a loss as to even a
method of approach. Each line of investigation only tended to prove
that Margaret Odell could not possibly have been murdered. And yet,
huddled on the great silken davenport in her living-room lay the
girl’s strangled body, giving the lie to so grotesque a conclusion.
The true story of this crime, as it eventually came to light after a
disheartening period of utter darkness and confusion, revealed many
strange and bizarre ramifications, many dark recesses of man’s
unexplored nature, and the uncanny subtlety of a human mind sharpened
by desperate and tragic despair. And it also revealed a hidden page of
passional melodrama which, in its essence and organisms, was no less
romantic and fascinating than that vivid, theatrical section of the
_Comédie Humaine_ which deals with the fabulous love of Baron Nucingen
for Esther van Gobseck, and with the unhappy Torpille’s tragic death.
Margaret Odell was a product of the bohemian _demi-monde_ of
Broadway—a scintillant figure who seemed somehow to typify the gaudy
and spurious romance of transient gaiety. For nearly two years before
her death she had been the most conspicuous and, in a sense, popular
figure of the city’s night life. In our grandparents’ day she might
have had conferred upon her that somewhat questionable designation,
“the toast of the town”; but to-day there are too many aspirants for
this classification, too many cliques and violent schisms in the
Lepidoptera of our café life, to permit of any one competitor being
thus singled out. But, for all the darlings of both professional and
lay press-agents, Margaret Odell was a character of unquestioned fame
in her little world.
Her notoriety was due in part to certain legendary tales of her
affairs with one or two obscure potentates in the backwashes of
Europe. She had spent two years abroad after her first success in “The
Bretonne Maid”—a popular musical comedy in which she had been
mysteriously raised from obscurity to the rank of “star”—and, one may
cynically imagine, her press-agent took full advantage of her absence
to circulate vermilion tales of her conquests.
Her appearance went far toward sustaining her somewhat equivocal fame.
There was no question that she was beautiful in a hard, slightly
flamboyant way. I remember seeing her dancing one night at the Antlers
Club—a famous rendezvous for post-midnight pleasure-seekers, run by
the notorious Red Raegan.* She impressed me then as a girl of uncommon
loveliness, despite the calculating, predatory cast of her features.
She was of medium height, slender, graceful in a leonine way, and, I
thought, a trifle aloof and even haughty in manner—a result, perhaps,
of her reputed association with European royalty. She had the
traditional courtesan’s full, red lips, and the wide, mongoose eyes of
Rossetti’s “Blessed Damozel.” There was in her face that strange
combination of sensual promise and spiritual renunciation with which
the painters of all ages have sought to endow their conceptions of the
Eternal Magdalene. Hers was the type of face, voluptuous and with a
hint of mystery, which rules man’s emotions and, by subjugating his
mind, drives him to desperate deeds.
* The Antlers Club has since been closed by the police; and
Red Raegan is now serving a long term in Sing Sing for grand
larceny.
Margaret Odell had received the sobriquet of Canary as a result of a
part she had played in an elaborate ornithological ballet of the
“Follies,” in which each girl had been gowned to represent a variety
of bird. To her had fallen the rôle of canary; and her costume of
white-and-yellow satin, together with her mass of shining golden hair
and pink-and-white complexion, had distinguished her in the eyes of
the spectators as a creature of outstanding charm. Before a fortnight
had passed—so eulogistic were her press notices, and so unerringly did
the audience single her out for applause—the “Bird Ballet” was changed
to the “Canary Ballet,” and Miss Odell was promoted to the rank of
what might charitably be called _première danseuse_, at the same time
having a solo waltz and a song* interpolated for the special display
of her charms and talents.
* Written especially for her by B. G. De Sylva.
She had quitted the “Follies” at the close of the season, and during
her subsequent spectacular career in the haunts of Broadway’s night
life she had been popularly and familiarly called the Canary. Thus it
happened that when her dead body was found, brutally strangled, in her
apartment, the crime immediately became known, and was always
thereafter referred to, as the Canary murder.
My own participation in the investigation of the Canary murder case—or
rather my rôle of Boswellian spectator—constituted one of the most
memorable experiences of my life. At the time of Margaret Odell’s
murder John F.-X. Markham was District Attorney of New York, having
taken office the preceding January. I need hardly remind you that
during the four years of his incumbency he distinguished himself by
his almost uncanny success as a criminal investigator. The praise
which was constantly accorded him, however, was highly distasteful to
him; for, being a man with a keen sense of honor, he instinctively
shrank from accepting credit for achievements not wholly his own. The
truth is that Markham played only a subsidiary part in the majority of
his most famous criminal cases. The credit for their actual solution
belonged to one of Markham’s very close friends, who refused, at the
time, to permit the facts to be made public.
This man was a young social aristocrat, whom, for purposes of
anonymity, I have chosen to call Philo Vance.
Vance had many amazing gifts and capabilities. He was an art collector
in a small way, a fine amateur pianist, and a profound student of
æsthetics and psychology. Although an American, he had largely been
educated in Europe, and still retained a slight English accent and
intonation. He had a liberal independent income, and spent
considerable time fulfilling the social obligations which devolved on
him as a result of family connections; but he was neither an idler nor
a dilettante. His manner was cynical and aloof; and those who met him
only casually, set him down as a snob. But knowing Vance, as I did,
intimately, I was able to glimpse the real man beneath the surface
indications; and I knew that his cynicism and aloofness, far from
being a pose, sprang instinctively from a nature which was at once
sensitive and solitary.
Vance was not yet thirty-five, and, in a cold, sculptural fashion, was
impressively good-looking. His face was slender and mobile; but there
was a stern, sardonic expression to his features, which acted as a
barrier between him and his fellows. He was not emotionless, but his
emotions were, in the main, intellectual. He was often criticised for
his asceticism, yet I have seen him exhibit rare bursts of enthusiasm
over an æsthetic or psychological problem. However, he gave the
impression of remaining remote from all mundane matters; and, in
truth, he looked upon life like a dispassionate and impersonal
spectator at a play, secretly amused and debonairly cynical at the
meaningless futility of it all. Withal, he had a mind avid for
knowledge, and few details of the human comedy that came within his
sphere of vision escaped him.
It was as a direct result of this intellectual inquisitiveness that he
became actively, though unofficially, interested in Markham’s criminal
investigations.
I kept a fairly complete record of the cases in which Vance
participated as a kind of _amicus curiæ_, little thinking that I would
ever be privileged to make them public; but Markham, after being
defeated, as you remember, on a hopelessly split ticket at the next
election, withdrew from politics; and last year Vance went abroad to
live, declaring he would never return to America. As a result, I
obtained permission from both of them to publish my notes in full.
Vance stipulated only that I should not reveal his name; but otherwise
no restrictions were placed upon me.
I have related elsewhere* the peculiar circumstances which led to
Vance’s participation in criminal research, and how, in the face of
almost insuperable contradictory evidence, he solved the mysterious
shooting of Alvin Benson. The present chronicle deals with his
solution of Margaret Odell’s murder, which took place in the early
fall of the same year, and which, you will recall, created an even
greater sensation than its predecessor.†
* “The Benson Murder Case” (Scribner’s, 1926).
† The Loeb–Leopold crime, the Dorothy King case, and the
Hall–Mills murder came later; but the Canary murder proved
fully as conspicuous a case as the Nan Patterson–“Cæsar”
Young affair, Durant’s murder of Blanche Lamont and Minnie
Williams in San Francisco, the Molineux arsenic-poisoning
case, and the Carlyle Harris morphine murder. To find a
parallel in point of public interest one must recall the
Borden double-murder in Fall River, the Thaw case, the
shooting of Elwell, and the Rosenthal murder.
A curious set of circumstances was accountable for the way in which
Vance was shouldered with this new investigation. Markham for weeks
had been badgered by the anti-administration newspapers for the signal
failures of his office in obtaining convictions against certain
underworld offenders whom the police had turned over to him for
prosecution. As a result of prohibition a new and dangerous, and
wholly undesirable, kind of night life had sprung up in New York. A
large number of well-financed cabarets, calling themselves night
clubs, had made their appearance along Broadway and in its side
streets; and already there had been an appalling number of serious
crimes, both passional and monetary, which, it was said, had had their
inception in these unsavory resorts.
At last, when a case of murder accompanying a hold-up and jewel
robbery in one of the family hotels up-town was traced directly to
plans and preparations made in one of the night clubs, and when two
detectives of the Homicide Bureau investigating the case were found
dead one morning in the neighborhood of the club, with bullet wounds
in their backs, Markham decided to pigeonhole the other affairs of his
office and take a hand personally in the intolerable criminal
conditions that had arisen.*
* The case referred to here was that of Mrs. Elinor Quiggly,
a wealthy widow living at the Adlon Hotel in West 96th
Street. She was found on the morning of September 5
suffocated by a gag which had been placed on her by robbers
who had evidently followed her home from the Club Turque—a
small but luxurious all-night café at 89 West 48th Street.
The killing of the two detectives, McQuade and Cannison, was,
the police believe, due to the fact that they were in
possession of incriminating evidence against the perpetrators
of the crime. Jewellery amounting to over $50,000 was stolen
from the Quiggly apartment.