The Murder
(Tuesday, September 11; 8.30 a. m.)
It was barely half past eight on that momentous morning of September
the 11th when Markham brought word to us of the event.
I was living temporarily with Vance at his home in East 38th Street—a
large remodelled apartment occupying the two top floors of a beautiful
mansion. For several years I had been Vance’s personal legal
representative and adviser, having resigned from my father’s law firm
of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine to devote myself to his needs and
interests. His affairs were by no means voluminous, but his personal
finances, together with his numerous purchases of paintings and
_objets d’art_, occupied my full time without burdening me. This
monetary and legal stewardship was eminently congenial to my tastes;
and my friendship with Vance, which had dated from our undergraduate
days at Harvard, supplied the social and human element in an
arrangement which otherwise might easily have degenerated into one of
mere drab routine.
On this particular morning I had risen early and was working in the
library when Currie, Vance’s valet and majordomo, announced Markham’s
presence in the living-room. I was considerably astonished at this
early-morning visit, for Markham well knew that Vance, who rarely rose
before noon, resented any intrusion upon his matutinal slumbers. And
in that moment I received the curious impression that something
unusual and portentous was toward.
I found Markham pacing restlessly up and down, his hat and gloves
thrown carelessly on the centre-table. As I entered he halted and
looked at me with harassed eyes. He was a moderately tall man,
clean-shaven, gray-haired, and firmly set up. His appearance was
distinguished, and his manner courteous and kindly. But beneath his
gracious exterior there was an aggressive sternness, an indomitable,
grim strength, that gave one the sense of dogged efficiency and
untiring capability.
“Good morning, Van,” he greeted me, with impatient perfunctoriness.
“There’s been another half-world murder—the worst and ugliest thus
far. . . .” He hesitated, and regarded me searchingly. “You recall my
chat with Vance at the club the other night? There was something
damned prophetic in his remarks. And you remember I half promised to
take him along on the next important case. Well, the case has
broken—with a vengeance. Margaret Odell, whom they called the Canary,
has been strangled in her apartment; and from what I just got over the
phone, it looks like another night-club affair. I’m headed for the
Odell apartment now. . . . What about rousing out the sybarite?”
“By all means,” I agreed, with an alacrity which, I fear, was in large
measure prompted by purely selfish motives. The Canary! If one had
sought the city over for a victim whose murder would stir up
excitement, there could have been but few selections better calculated
to produce this result.
Hastening to the door, I summoned Currie, and told him to call Vance
at once.
“I’m afraid, sir——” began Currie, politely hesitant.
“Calm your fears,” cut in Markham. “I’ll take all responsibility for
waking him at this indecent hour.”
Currie sensed an emergency and departed.
A minute or two later Vance, in an elaborately embroidered silk kimono
and sandals, appeared at the living-room door.
“My word!” he greeted us, in mild astonishment, glancing at the clock.
“Haven’t you chaps gone to bed yet?”
He strolled to the mantel, and selected a gold-tipped _Régie_
cigarette from a small Florentine humidor.
Markham’s eyes narrowed: he was in no mood for levity.
“The Canary has been murdered,” I blurted out.
Vance held his wax vesta poised, and gave me a look of indolent
inquisitiveness. “Whose canary?”
“Margaret Odell was found strangled this morning,” amended Markham
brusquely. “Even _you_, wrapped in your scented cotton-wool, have
heard of her. And you can realize the significance of the crime. I’m
personally going to look for those footprints in the snow; and if you
want to come along, as you intimated the other night, you’ll have to
get a move on.”
Vance crushed out his cigarette.
“Margaret Odell, eh?—Broadway’s blonde Aspasia—or was it Phryne who
had the _coiffure d’or?_ . . . Most distressin’!” Despite his offhand
manner, I could see he was deeply interested. “The base enemies of law
and order are determined to chivvy you most horribly, aren’t they, old
dear? Deuced inconsiderate of ’em! . . . Excuse me while I seek
habiliments suitable to the occasion.”
He disappeared into his bedroom, while Markham took out a large cigar
and resolutely prepared it for smoking, and I returned to the library
to put away the papers on which I had been working.
In less than ten minutes Vance reappeared, dressed for the street.
“_Bien, mon vieux_,” he announced gaily, as Currie handed him his hat
and gloves and a malacca cane. “_Allons-y!_”
We rode up-town along Madison Avenue, turned into Central Park, and
came out by the West 72d Street entrance. Margaret Odell’s apartment
was at 184 West 71st Street, near Broadway; and as we drew up to the
curb, it was necessary for the patrolman on duty to make a passage for
us through the crowd that had already gathered as a result of the
arrival of the police.
Feathergill, an assistant District Attorney, was waiting in the main
hall for his Chief’s arrival.
“It’s too bad, sir,” he lamented. “A rotten show all round. And just
at this time! . . .” He shrugged his shoulders discouragingly.
“It may collapse quickly,” said Markham, shaking the other’s hand.
“How are things going? Sergeant Heath phoned me right after you
called, and said that, at first glance, the case looked a bit
stubborn.”
“Stubborn?” repeated Feathergill lugubriously. “It’s downright
impervious. Heath is spinning round like a turbine. He was called off
the Boyle case, by the way, to devote his talents to this new shocker.
Inspector Moran arrived ten minutes ago, and gave him the official
imprimatur.”
“Well, Heath’s a good man,” declared Markham. “We’ll work it
out. . . . Which is the apartment?”
Feathergill led the way to a door at the rear of the main hall.
“Here you are, sir,” he announced. “I’ll be running along now. I need
sleep. Good luck!” And he was gone.
It will be necessary to give a brief description of the house and its
interior arrangement, for the somewhat peculiar structure of the
building played a vital part in the seemingly insoluble problem posed
by the murder.
The house, which was a four-story stone structure originally built as
a residence, had been remodelled, both inside and outside, to meet the
requirements of an exclusive individual apartment dwelling. There
were, I believe, three or four separate suites on each floor; but the
quarters up-stairs need not concern us. The main floor was the scene
of the crime, and here there were three apartments and a dentist’s
office.
The main entrance to the building was directly on the street, and
extending straight back from the front door was a wide hallway.
Directly at the rear of this hallway, and facing the entrance, was the
door to the Odell apartment, which bore the numeral “3.” About
half-way down the front hall, on the right-hand side, was the stairway
leading to the floors above; and directly beyond the stairway, also on
the right, was a small reception-room with a wide archway instead of a
door. Directly opposite to the stairway, in a small recess, stood the
telephone switchboard. There was no elevator in the house.
[Illustration: A ground-floor plan of an apartment building. The front
door is on the south side, and faces West Seventy-First Street. It
opens into the main hallway, which runs north past a dentist’s office,
a telephone switchboard, stairs to the upper floors, a reception room,
and two apartments, before turning into a narrow passageway to the
east that ends in a side door leading to a court next to an alleyway.
At the juncture of this passageway and the main hallway is the door to
a large apartment labeled “Odell Apartment”.]
Another important feature of this ground-floor plan was a small
passageway at the rear of the main hall and at right angles to it,
which led past the front walls of the Odell apartment to a door
opening on a court at the west side of the building. This court was
connected with the street by an alley four feet wide.
In the accompanying diagram this arrangement of the ground floor can
be easily visualized, and I suggest that the reader fix it in his
mind; for I doubt if ever before so simple and obvious an
architectural design played such an important part in a criminal
mystery. By its very simplicity and almost conventional
familiarity—indeed, by its total lack of any puzzling complications—it
proved so baffling to the investigators that the case threatened, for
many days, to remain forever insoluble.
As Markham entered the Odell apartment that morning Sergeant Ernest
Heath came forward at once and extended his hand. A look of relief
passed over his broad, pugnacious features; and it was obvious that
the animosity and rivalry which always exist between the Detective
Division and the District Attorney’s office during the investigation
of any criminal case had no place in his attitude on this occasion.
“I’m glad you’ve come, sir,” he said; and meant it.
He then turned to Vance with a cordial smile, and held out his hand.*
* Heath had become acquainted with Vance during the
investigation of the Benson murder case two months
previously.
“So the amachoor sleuth is with us again!” His tone held a friendly
banter.
“Oh, quite,” murmured Vance. “How’s your induction coil working this
beautiful September morning, Sergeant?”
“I’d hate to tell you!” Then Heath’s face grew suddenly grave, and he
turned to Markham. “It’s a raw deal, sir. Why in hell couldn’t they
have picked some one besides the Canary for their dirty work? There’s
plenty of Janes on Broadway who coulda faded from the picture without
causing a second alarm; but they gotta go and bump off the Queen of
Sheba!”
As he spoke, William M. Moran, the commanding officer of the Detective
Bureau, came into the little foyer and performed the usual
hand-shaking ceremony. Though he had met Vance and me but once before,
and then casually, he remembered us both and addressed us courteously
by name.
“Your arrival,” he said to Markham, in a well-bred, modulated voice,
“is very welcome. Sergeant Heath will give you what preliminary
information you want. I’m still pretty much in the dark myself—only
just arrived.”
“A lot of information _I’ve_ got to give,” grumbled Heath, as he led
the way into the living-room.
Margaret Odell’s apartment was a suite of two fairly large rooms
connected by a wide archway draped with heavy damask portières. The
entrance door from the main hall of the building led into a small
rectangular foyer about eight feet long and four feet deep, with
double Venetian-glass doors opening into the main room beyond. There
was no other entrance to the apartment, and the bedroom could be
reached only through the archway from the living-room.
There was a large davenport, covered with brocaded silk, in front of
the fireplace in the left-hand wall of the living-room, with a long
narrow library-table of inlaid rosewood extending along its back. On
the opposite wall, between the foyer and the archway into the bedroom,
hung a triplicate Marie Antoinette mirror, beneath which stood a
mahogany gate-legged table. On the far side of the archway, near the
large oriel window, was a baby grand Steinway piano with a beautifully
designed and decorated case of Louis-Seize ornamentation. In the
corner to the right of the fireplace was a spindle-legged escritoire
and a square hand-painted waste-paper basket of vellum. To the left of
the fireplace stood one of the loveliest Boule cabinets I have ever
seen. Several excellent reproductions of Boucher, Fragonard, and
Watteau hung about the walls. The bedroom contained a chest of
drawers, a dressing-table, and several gold-leaf chairs. The whole
apartment seemed eminently in keeping with the Canary’s fragile and
evanescent personality.
As we stepped from the little foyer into the living-room and stood for
a moment looking about, a scene bordering on wreckage met our eyes.
The rooms had apparently been ransacked by some one in a frenzy of
haste, and the disorder of the place was appalling.
[Illustration: The layout of the Odell apartment’s living-room. The
fireplace is built into the west wall, and is flanked by a boule
cabinet and an escritoire. Before the fireplace is a davenport, and a
cross mark on the davenport is labeled “where Margaret Odell was
strangled”. Behind the davenport is a narrow table with a lamp. Along
the east wall is a gate-leg table with a mirror, and the passage to
the bedroom. The north wall is taken up by three large windows. A door
on the south wall opens into a large clothes closet, and another pair
of doors leads out into a small foyer, which in turn leads to the
apartment’s entrace.]
“They didn’t exactly do the job in dainty fashion,” remarked Inspector
Moran.
“I suppose we oughta be grateful they didn’t blow the joint up with
dynamite,” returned Heath acridly.
But it was not the general disorder that most attracted us. Our gaze
was almost immediately drawn and held by the body of the dead girl,
which rested in an unnatural, semi-recumbent attitude in the corner of
the davenport nearest to where we stood. Her head was turned backward,
as if by force, over the silken tufted upholstery; and her hair had
come unfastened and lay beneath her head and over her bare shoulder
like a frozen cataract of liquid gold. Her face, in violent death, was
distorted and unlovely. Her skin was discolored; her eyes were
staring; her mouth was open, and her lips were drawn back. Her neck,
on either side of the thyroid cartilage, showed ugly dark bruises. She
was dressed in a flimsy evening gown of black Chantilly lace over
cream-colored chiffon, and across the arm of the davenport had been
thrown an evening cape of cloth-of-gold trimmed with ermine.
There were evidences of her ineffectual struggle with the person who
had strangled her. Besides the dishevelled condition of her hair, one
of the shoulder-straps of her gown had been severed, and there was a
long rent in the fine lace across her breast. A small corsage of
artificial orchids had been torn from her bodice, and lay crumpled in
her lap. One satin slipper had fallen off, and her right knee was
twisted inward on the seat of the davenport, as if she had sought to
lift herself out of the suffocating clutches of her antagonist. Her
fingers were still flexed, no doubt as they had been at the moment of
her capitulation to death, when she had relinquished her grip upon the
murderer’s wrists.
The spell of horror cast over us by the sight of the tortured body was
broken by the matter-of-fact tones of Heath.
“You see, Mr. Markham, she was evidently sitting in the corner of this
settee when she was grabbed suddenly from behind.”
Markham nodded. “It must have taken a pretty strong man to strangle
her so easily.”
“I’ll say!” agreed Heath. He bent over and pointed to the girl’s
fingers, on which showed several abrasions. “They stripped her rings
off, too; and they didn’t go about it gentle, either.” Then he
indicated a segment of fine platinum chain, set with tiny pearls,
which hung over one of her shoulders. “And they grabbed whatever it
was hanging round her neck, and broke the chain doing it. They weren’t
overlooking anything, or losing any time. . . . A swell, gentlemanly
job. Nice and refined.”
“Where’s the Medical Examiner?” asked Markham.
“He’s coming,” Heath told him. “You can’t get Doc Doremus to go
anywheres without his breakfast.”
“He may find something else—something that doesn’t show.”
“There’s plenty showing for me,” declared Heath. “Look at this
apartment. It wouldn’t be much worse if a Kansas cyclone had struck
it.”
We turned from the depressing spectacle of the dead girl and moved
toward the centre of the room.
“Be careful not to touch anything, Mr. Markham,” warned Heath. “I’ve
sent for the finger-print experts—they’ll be here any minute now.”
Vance looked up in mock astonishment.
“Finger-prints? You don’t say—really! How delightful!—Imagine a
johnnie in this enlightened day leaving his finger-prints for you to
find.”
“All crooks aren’t clever, Mr. Vance,” declared Heath combatively.
“Oh, dear, no! They’d never be apprehended if they were. But, after
all, Sergeant, even an authentic finger-print merely means that the
person who made it was dallying around at some time or other. It
doesn’t indicate guilt.”
“Maybe so,” conceded Heath doggedly. “But I’m here to tell you that if
I get any good honest-to-God finger-prints outa this devastated area,
it’s not going so easy with the bird that made ’em.”
Vance appeared to be shocked. “You positively terrify me, Sergeant.
Henceforth I shall adopt mittens as a permanent addition to my attire.
I’m always handling the furniture and the teacups and the various
knickknacks in the houses where I call, don’t y’ know.”
Markham interposed himself at this point, and suggested they make a
tour of inspection while waiting for the Medical Examiner.
“They didn’t add anything much to the usual methods,” Heath pointed
out. “Killed the girl, and then ripped things wide open.”
The two rooms had apparently been thoroughly ransacked. Clothes and
various articles were strewn about the floor. The doors of both
clothes-closets (there was one in each room) were open, and to judge
from the chaos in the bedroom closet, it had been hurriedly searched;
although the closet off of the living-room, which was given over to
the storage of infrequently used items, appeared to have been ignored.
The drawers of the dressing-table and chest had been partly emptied on
to the floor, and the bedclothes had been snatched away and the
mattress turned back. Two chairs and a small occasional table were
upset; several vases were broken, as if they had been searched and
then thrown down in the wrath of disappointment; and the Marie
Antoinette mirror had been broken. The escritoire was open, and its
pigeonholes had been emptied in a jumbled pile upon the blotter. The
doors of the Boule cabinet swung wide, and inside there was the same
confusion of contents that marked the interior of the escritoire. The
bronze-and-porcelain lamp on the end of the library-table was lying on
its side, its satin shade torn where it had struck the sharp corner of
a silver _bonbonnière_.
Two objects in the general disarray particularly attracted my
attention—a black metal document-box of the kind purchasable at any
stationery store, and a large jewel-case of sheet steel with a
circular inset lock. The latter of these objects was destined to play
a curious and sinister part in the investigation to follow.
The document-box, which was now empty, had been placed on the
library-table, next to the overturned lamp. Its lid was thrown back,
and the key was still in the lock. In all the litter and
disorganization of the room, this box seemed to be the one outstanding
indication of calm and orderly activity on the part of the wrecker.
The jewel-case, on the other hand, had been violently wrenched open.
It sat on the dressing-table in the bedroom, dinted and twisted out of
shape by the terrific leverage that had been necessary to force it,
and beside it lay a brass-handled, cast-iron poker which had evidently
been brought from the living-room and used as a makeshift chisel with
which to prize open the lock.
Vance had glanced but casually at the different objects in the rooms
as we made our rounds, but when he came to the dressing-table, he
paused abruptly. Taking out his monocle, he adjusted it carefully, and
leaned over the broken jewel-case.
“Most extr’ordin’ry!” he murmured, tapping the edge of the lid with
his gold pencil. “What do you make of that, Sergeant?”
Heath had been eyeing Vance with narrowed lids as the latter bent over
the dressing-table.
“What’s in your mind, Mr. Vance?” he, in turn, asked.
“Oh, more than you could ever guess,” Vance answered lightly. “But
just at the moment I was toying with the idea that this steel case was
never torn open by that wholly inadequate iron poker, what?”
Heath nodded his head approvingly. “So you, too, noticed that, did
you? . . . And you’re dead right. That poker might’ve twisted the box
a little, but it never snapped that lock.”
He turned to Inspector Moran.
“That’s the puzzler I’ve sent for ‘Prof’ Brenner to clean up—_if_ he
can. The jimmying of that jewel-case looks to me like a high-class
professional job. No Sunday-school superintendent did it.”
Vance continued for a while to study the box, but at length he turned
away with a perplexed frown.
“I say!” he commented. “Something devilish queer took place here last
night.”
“Oh, not so queer,” Heath amended. “It was a thorough job, all right,
but there’s nothing mysterious about it.”
Vance polished his monocle and put it away.
“If you go to work on that basis, Sergeant,” he returned carelessly,
“I greatly fear you’ll run aground on a reef. And may kind Heaven
bring you safe to shore!”