The Bishop Murder Case
by S. S. Van Dine
published by Charles Scribner’s Sons (New York)
Copyright, 1929, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Contents
I. “Who Killed Cock Robin?”
II. On the Archery Range
III. A Prophecy Recalled
IV. A Mysterious Note
V. A Woman’s Scream
VI. “‘I,’ Said the Sparrow”
VII. Vance Reaches a Conclusion
VIII. Act Two
IX. The Tensor Formula
X. A Refusal of Aid
XI. The Stolen Revolver
XII. A Midnight Call
XIII. In the Bishop’s Shadow
XIV. A Game of Chess
XV. An Interview with Pardee
XVI. Act Three
XVII. An All-Night Light
XVIII. The Wall in the Park
XIX. The Red Note-book
XX. The Nemesis
XXI. Mathematics and Murder
XXII. The House of Cards
XXIII. A Startling Discovery
XXIV. The Last Act
XXV. The Curtain Falls
XXVI. Heath Asks a Question
The Earth is a Temple where there is
going on a Mystery Play, childish and
poignant, ridiculous and awful enough
in all conscience.
—Conrad.
Characters of the Book
Philo Vance
John F.-X. Markham
District Attorney of New York County.
Ernest Heath
Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Professor Bertrand Dillard
A famous physicist.
Belle Dillard
His niece.
Sigurd Arnesson
His adopted son: an associate professor of mathematics.
Pyne
The Dillard butler.
Beedle
The Dillard cook.
Adolph Drukker
Scientist and author.
Mrs. Otto Drukker
His mother.
Grete Menzel
The Drukker cook.
John Pardee
Mathematician and chess expert: inventor of the Pardee gambit.
J. C. Robin
Sportsman and champion archer.
Raymond Sperling
Civil Engineer.
John E. Sprigg
Senior at Columbia University.
Dr. Whitney Barstead
An eminent neurologist.
Quinan
Police Reporter of the _World_.
Madeleine Moffat
Chief Inspector O’Brien
Of the Police Department of New York City.
William M. Moran
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.
Captain Pitts
Of the Homicide Bureau.
Guilfoyle
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Hennessey
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Emery
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Captain Dubois
Finger-print expert.
Dr. Emanuel Doremus
Medical Examiner.
Swacker
Secretary to the District Attorney.
Currie
Vance’s valet.
CHAPTER I.
“Who Killed Cock Robin?”
(Saturday, April 2; noon)
Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an
unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the
seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying,
was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.* The orgy of
horror at the old Greene mansion had been brought to its astounding
close in December; and after the Christmas holidays Vance had gone to
Switzerland for the winter sports. Returning to New York at the end of
February he had thrown himself into some literary work he had long had
in mind—the uniform translation of the principal fragments of Menander
found in the Egyptian papyri during the early years of the present
century; and for over a month he had devoted himself sedulously to
this thankless task.
* “The Greene Murder Case” (Scribners, 1928).
Whether or not he would have completed the translations, even had his
labors not been interrupted, I do not know; for Vance was a man of
cultural ardencies, in whom the spirit of research and intellectual
adventure was constantly at odds with the drudgery necessary to
scholastic creation. I remember that only the preceding year he had
begun writing a life of Xenophon—the result of an enthusiasm inherited
from his university days when he had first read the _Anabasis_ and the
_Memorabilia_—and had lost interest in it at the point where
Xenophon’s historic march led the Ten Thousand back to the sea.
However, the fact remains that Vance’s translation of Menander was
rudely interrupted in early April; and for weeks he became absorbed in
a criminal mystery which threw the entire country into a state of
gruesome excitement.
This new criminal investigation, in which he acted as a kind of
_amicus curiæ_ for John F.-X. Markham, the District Attorney of New
York, at once became known as the Bishop murder case. The
designation—the result of our journalistic instinct to attach labels
to every _cause célèbre_—was, in a sense, a misnomer. There was
nothing ecclesiastical about that ghoulish saturnalia of crime which
set an entire community to reading the “Mother Goose Melodies” with
fearful apprehension;* and no one of the name of Bishop was, as far as
I know, even remotely connected with the monstrous events which bore
that appellation. But, withal, the word “Bishop” was appropriate, for
it was an _alias_ used by the murderer for the grimmest of purposes.
Incidentally it was this name that eventually led Vance to the almost
incredible truth, and ended one of the most ghastly multiple crimes in
police history.
* Mr. Joseph A. Margolies of Brentano’s told me that for a period of
several weeks during the Bishop murder case more copies of “Mother
Goose Melodies” were sold than of any current novel. And one of the
smaller publishing houses reprinted and completely sold out an
entire edition of those famous old nursery rhymes.
The series of uncanny and apparently unrelated events which
constituted the Bishop murder case and drove all thought of Menander
and Greek monostichs from Vance’s mind, began on the morning of April
2, less than five months after the double shooting of Julia and Ada
Greene. It was one of those warm luxurious spring days which sometimes
bless New York in early April; and Vance was breakfasting in his
little roof garden atop his apartment in East 38th Street. It was
nearly noon—for Vance worked or read until all hours, and was a late
riser—and the sun, beating down from a clear blue sky, cast a mantle
of introspective lethargy over the city. Vance sprawled in an easy
chair, his breakfast on a low table beside him, gazing with cynical,
regretful eyes down at the treetops in the rear yard.
I knew what was in his mind. It was his custom each spring to go to
France; and it had long since come to him to think, as it came to
George Moore, that Paris and May were one. But the great trek of the
post-war American _nouveaux riches_ to Paris had spoiled his pleasure
in this annual pilgrimage; and, only the day before, he had informed
me that we were to remain in New York for the summer.
For years I had been Vance’s friend and legal adviser—a kind of
monetary steward and agent-companion. I had quitted my father’s law
firm of Van Dine, Davis & Van Dine to devote myself wholly to his
interests—a post I found far more congenial than that of general
attorney in a stuffy office—and though my own bachelor quarters were
in a hotel on the West Side, I spent most of my time at Vance’s
apartment.
I had arrived early that morning, long before Vance was up, and,
having gone over the first-of-the-month accounts, now sat smoking my
pipe idly as he breakfasted.
“Y’ know, Van,” he said to me, in his emotionless drawl; “the prospect
of spring and summer in New York is neither excitin’ nor romantic.
It’s going to be a beastly bore. But it’ll be less annoyin’ than
travelin’ in Europe with the vulgar hordes of tourists jostlin’ one at
every turn. . . . It’s very distressin’.”
Little did he suspect what the next few weeks held in store for him.
Had he known I doubt if even the prospect of an old pre-war spring in
Paris would have taken him away; for his insatiable mind liked nothing
better than a complicated problem; and even as he spoke to me that
morning the gods that presided over his destiny were preparing for him
a strange and fascinating enigma—one which was to stir the nation
deeply and add a new and terrible chapter to the annals of crime.
Vance had scarcely poured his second cup of coffee when Currie, his
old English butler and general factotum, appeared at the French doors
bearing a portable telephone.
“It’s Mr. Markham, sir,” the old man said apologetically. “As he
seemed rather urgent, I took the liberty of informing him you were
in.” He plugged the telephone into a baseboard switch, and set the
instrument on the breakfast table.
“Quite right, Currie,” Vance murmured, taking off the receiver.
“Anything to break this deuced monotony.” Then he spoke to Markham. “I
say, old man, don’t you ever sleep? I’m in the midst of an _omelette
aux fines herbes_. Will you join me? Or do you merely crave the music
of my voice——?”
He broke off abruptly, and the bantering look on his lean features
disappeared. Vance was a marked Nordic type, with a long, sharply
chiselled face; gray, wide-set eyes; a narrow aquiline nose; and a
straight oval chin. His mouth, too, was firm and clean-cut, but it
held a look of cynical cruelty which was more Mediterranean than
Nordic. His face was strong and attractive, though not exactly
handsome. It was the face of a thinker and recluse; and its very
severity—at once studious and introspective—acted as a barrier between
him and his fellows.
Though he was immobile by nature and sedulously schooled in the
repression of his emotions, I noticed that, as he listened to Markham
on the phone that morning, he could not entirely disguise his eager
interest in what was being told him. A slight frown ruffled his
brow; and his eyes reflected his inner amazement. From time to
time he gave vent to a murmured “Amazin’!” or “My word!” or “Most
extr’ordin’ry!”—his favorite expletives—and when at the end of several
minutes he spoke to Markham, a curious excitement marked his manner.
“Oh, by all means!” he said. “I shouldn’t miss it for all the lost
comedies of Menander. . . . It sounds mad. . . . I’ll don fitting
raiment immediately. . . . _Au revoir_.”
Replacing the receiver, he rang for Currie.
“My gray tweeds,” he ordered. “A sombre tie, and my black Homburg
hat.” Then he returned to his omelet with a preoccupied air.
After a few moments he looked at me quizzically.
“What might you know of archery, Van?” he asked.
I knew nothing of archery, save that it consisted of shooting arrows
at targets, and I confessed as much.
“You’re not exactly revealin’, don’t y’ know.” He lighted one of his
_Régie_ cigarettes indolently. “However, we’re in for a little flutter
of toxophily, it seems. I’m no leading authority on the subject
myself, but I did a bit of potting with the bow at Oxford. It’s not a
passionately excitin’ pastime—much duller than golf and fully as
complicated.” He smoked a while dreamily. “I say, Van; fetch me Doctor
Elmer’s tome on archery from the library—there’s a good chap.”*
* The book Vance referred to was that excellent and comprehensive
treatise, “Archery,” by Robert P. Elmer, M.D.
I brought the book, and for nearly half an hour he dipped into it,
tarrying over the chapters on archery associations, tournaments and
matches, and scanning the long tabulation of the best American scores.
At length he settled back in his chair. It was obvious he had found
something that caused him troubled concern and set his sensitive mind
to work.
“It’s quite mad, Van,” he remarked, his eyes in space. “A mediæval
tragedy in modern New York! We don’t wear buskins and leathern
doublets, and yet—_By Jove!_” He suddenly sat upright. “No—no! It’s
absurd. I’m letting the insanity of Markham’s news affect me. . . .”
He drank some more coffee, but his expression told me that he could
not rid himself of the idea that had taken possession of him.
“One more favor, Van,” he said at length. “Fetch me my German
diction’ry and Burton E. Stevenson’s ‘Home Book of Verse.’”
When I had brought the volumes, he glanced at one word in the
dictionary, and pushed the book from him.
“That’s that, unfortunately—though I knew it all the time.”
Then he turned to the section in Stevenson’s gigantic anthology which
included the rhymes of the nursery and of childhood. After several
minutes he closed that book, too, and, stretching himself out in his
chair, blew a long ribbon of smoke toward the awning overhead.
“It can’t be true,” he protested, as if to himself. “It’s too
fantastic, too fiendish, too utterly distorted. A fairy tale
in terms of blood—a world in anamorphosis—a perversion of all
rationality. . . . It’s unthinkable, senseless, like black magic and
sorcery and thaumaturgy. It’s downright demented.”
He glanced at his watch and, rising, went indoors, leaving me to
speculate vaguely on the cause of his unwonted perturbation. A
treatise on archery, a German dictionary, a collection of children’s
verses, and Vance’s incomprehensible utterances regarding insanity and
fantasy—what possible connection could these things have? I attempted
to find a least common denominator, but without the slightest success.
And it was no wonder I failed. Even the truth, when it came out weeks
later bolstered up by an array of incontestable evidence, seemed too
incredible and too wicked for acceptance by the normal mind of man.
Vance shortly broke in on my futile speculations. He was dressed for
the street, and seemed impatient at Markham’s delay in arriving.
“Y’ know, I wanted something to interest me—a nice fascinatin’ crime,
for instance,” he remarked; “but—my word!—I wasn’t exactly longin’ for
a nightmare. If I didn’t know Markham so well I’d suspect him of
spoofing.”
When Markham stepped into the roof garden a few minutes later it was
only too plain that he had been in deadly earnest. His expression was
sombre and troubled, and his usual cordial greeting he reduced to the
merest curt formality. Markham and Vance had been intimate friends for
fifteen years. Though of antipodal natures—the one sternly aggressive,
brusque, forthright, and almost ponderously serious; the other
whimsical, cynical, debonair, and aloof from the transient concerns of
life—they found in each other that attraction of complementaries which
so often forms the basis of an inseparable and enduring companionship.
During Markham’s year and four months as District Attorney of New York
he had often called Vance into conference on matters of grave
importance, and in every instance Vance had justified the confidence
placed in his judgments. Indeed, to Vance almost entirely belongs the
credit for solving the large number of major crimes which occurred
during Markham’s four years’ incumbency. His knowledge of human
nature, his wide reading and cultural attainments, his shrewd sense of
logic, and his _flair_ for the hidden truth beneath misleading
exteriors, all fitted him for the task of criminal investigator—a task
which he fulfilled unofficially in connection with the cases which
came under Markham’s jurisdiction.
Vance’s first case, it will be remembered, had to do with the murder
of Alvin Benson;* and had it not been for his participation in that
affair I doubt if the truth concerning it would ever have come to
light. Then followed the notorious strangling of Margaret Odell†—a
murder mystery in which the ordinary methods of police detection would
inevitably have failed. And last year the astounding Greene murders
(to which I have already referred) would undoubtedly have succeeded
had not Vance been able to frustrate their final intent.
* “The Benson Murder Case” (Scribners, 1926).
† “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” (Scribners, 1927).
It was not surprising, therefore, that Markham should have turned to
Vance at the very beginning of the Bishop murder case. More and more,
I had noticed, he had come to rely on the other’s help in his criminal
investigations; and in the present instance it was particularly
fortunate that he appealed to Vance, for only through an intimate
knowledge of the abnormal psychological manifestations of the human
mind, such as Vance possessed, could that black, insensate plot have
been contravened and the perpetrator unearthed.
“This whole thing may be a mare’s-nest,” said Markham, without
conviction. “But I thought you might want to come along. . . .”
“Oh, quite!” Vance gave Markham a sardonic smile. “Sit down a moment
and tell me the tale coherently. The corpse won’t run away. And it’s
best to get our facts in some kind of order before we view the
remains.—Who are the parties of the first part, for instance? And why
the projection of the District Attorney’s office into a murder case
within an hour of the deceased’s passing? All that you’ve told me so
far resolves itself into the utterest nonsense.”
Markham sat down gloomily on the edge of a chair and inspected the end
of his cigar.
“Damn it, Vance! Don’t start in with a mysteries-of-Udolpho attitude.
The crime—if it is a crime—seems clear-cut enough. It’s an unusual
method of murder, I’ll admit; but it’s certainly not senseless.
Archery has become quite a fad of late. Bows and arrows are in use
to-day in practically every city and college in America.”
“Granted. But it’s been a long time since they were used to kill
persons named Robin.”
Markham’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at Vance searchingly.
“That idea occurred to you, too, did it?”
“Occurred to me? It leapt to my brain the moment you mentioned the
victim’s name.” Vance puffed a moment on his cigarette. “‘Who Killed
Cock Robin?’ And with a bow and arrow! . . . Queer how the doggerel
learned in childhood clings to the memory.—By the by, what was the
unfortunate Mr. Robin’s first name?”
“Joseph, I believe.”
“Neither edifyin’ nor suggestive. . . . Any middle name?”
“See here, Vance!” Markham rose irritably. “What has the murdered
man’s middle name to do with the case?”
“I haven’t the groggiest. Only, as long as we’re going insane we may
as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.”
He rang for Currie and sent him for the telephone directory. Markham
protested, but Vance pretended not to hear; and when the directory
arrived he thumbed its pages for several moments.
“Did the departed live on Riverside Drive?” he asked finally, holding
his finger on a name he had found.
“I think he did.”
“Well, well.” Vance closed the book, and fixed a quizzically
triumphant gaze on the District Attorney. “Markham,” he said slowly,
“there’s only one Joseph Robin listed in the telephone direct’ry. He
lives on Riverside Drive, and his middle name is—Cochrane!”
“What rot is this?” Markham’s tone was almost ferocious. “Suppose his
name _was_ Cochrane: are you seriously suggesting that the fact had
anything to do with his being murdered?”
“’Pon my word, old man, I’m suggesting nothing.” Vance shrugged his
shoulders slightly. “I’m merely jotting down, so to speak, a few facts
in connection with the case. As the matter stands now: a Mr. Joseph
Cochrane Robin—to wit: Cock Robin—has been killed by a bow and
arrow.—Doesn’t that strike even your legal mind as deuced queer?”
“No!” Markham fairly spat the negative. “The name of the dead man is
certainly common enough; and it’s a wonder more people haven’t been
killed or injured with all this revival of archery throughout the
country. Moreover, it’s wholly possible that Robin’s death was the
result of an accident.”
“Oh, my aunt!” Vance wagged his head reprovingly. “That fact, even
were it true, wouldn’t help the situation any. It would only make it
queerer. Of the thousands of archery enthusiasts in these fair states,
the one with the name of Cock Robin should be accidentally killed with
an arrow! Such a supposition would lead us into spiritism and
demonology and whatnot. Do you, by any chance, believe in Eblises and
Azazels and jinn who go about playing Satanic jokes on mankind?”
“Must I be a Mohammedan mythologist to admit coincidences?” returned
Markham tartly.
“My dear fellow! The proverbial long arm of coincidence doesn’t extend
to infinity. There are, after all, laws of probability, based on quite
definite mathematical formulas. It would make me sad to think that
such men as Laplace* and Czuber and von Kries had lived in vain.—The
present situation, however, is even more complicated than you suspect.
For instance, you mentioned over the phone that the last person known
to have been with Robin before his death is named Sperling.”
* Though Laplace is best known for his “Méchanique Céleste,” Vance
was here referring to his masterly work, “Théorie Analytique des
Probabilités,” which Herschel called “the ne plus ultra of
mathematical skill and power.”
“And what esoteric significance lies in that fact?”
“Perhaps you know what _Sperling_ means in German,” suggested Vance
dulcetly.
“I’ve been to High School,” retorted Markham. Then his eyes opened
slightly, and his body became tense.
Vance pushed the German dictionary toward him.
“Well, anyway, look up the word. We might as well be thorough. I
looked it up myself. I was afraid my imagination was playing tricks on
me, and I had a yearnin’ to see the word in black and white.”
Markham opened the book in silence, and let his eye run down the page.
After staring at the word for several moments he drew himself up
resolutely, as if fighting off a spell. When he spoke his voice was
defiantly belligerent.
“_Sperling_ means ‘sparrow.’ Any school boy knows that. What of it?”
“Oh, to be sure.” Vance lit another cigarette languidly. “And any
school boy knows the old nursery rhyme entitled ‘The Death and Burial
of Cock Robin,’ what?” He glanced tantalizingly at Markham, who stood
immobile, staring out into the spring sunshine. “Since you pretend to
be unfamiliar with that childhood classic, permit me to recite the
first stanza.”
A chill, as of some unseen spectral presence, passed over me as Vance
repeated those old familiar lines:
“Who killed Cock Robin?
‘I,’ said the sparrow,
‘With my bow and arrow.
I killed Cock Robin.’”