At the Greene Mansion
(Tuesday, November 9; 2.30 p. m.)
The Greene mansion—as it was commonly referred to by New Yorkers—was a
relic of the city’s _ancien régime_. It had stood for three
generations at the eastern extremity of 53d Street, two of its oriel
windows actually overhanging the murky waters of the East River. The
lot upon which the house was built extended through the entire block—a
distance of two hundred feet—and had an equal frontage on the
cross-streets. The character of the neighborhood had changed radically
since the early days; but the spirit of commercial advancement had
left the domicile of the Greenes untouched. It was an oasis of
idealism and calm in the midst of moiling commercial enterprise; and
one of the stipulations in old Tobias Greene’s last will and testament
had been that the mansion should stand intact for at least a quarter
of a century after his death, as a monument to him and his ancestors.
One of his last acts on earth was to erect a high stone wall about the
entire property, with a great double iron gateway opening on 53d
Street and a postern-gate for tradesmen giving on 52d Street.
The mansion itself was two and a half stories high, surmounted by
gabled spires and chimney clusters. It was what architects call, with
a certain intonation of contempt, a “château flamboyant”; but no
derogatory appellation could detract from the quiet dignity and the
air of feudal traditionalism that emanated from its great rectangular
blocks of gray limestone. The house was sixteenth-century Gothic in
style, with more than a suspicion of the new Italian ornament in its
parts; and the pinnacles and shelves suggested the Byzantine. But, for
all its diversity of detail, it was not flowery, and would have held
no deep attraction for the Freemason architects of the Middle Ages. It
was not “bookish” in effect; it exuded the very essence of the old.
In the front yard were maples and clipped evergreens, interspersed
with hydrangea and lilac-bushes; and at the rear was a row of weeping
willows overhanging the river. Along the herring-bone-bond brick walks
were high quickset hedges of hawthorn; and the inner sides of the
encircling wall were covered with compact espaliers. To the west of
the house an asphalt driveway led to a double garage at the rear—an
addition built by the newer generation of Greenes. But here too were
boxwood hedgerows which cloaked the driveway’s modernity.
As we entered the grounds that gray November afternoon an atmosphere
of foreboding bleakness seemed to have settled over the estate. The
trees and shrubs were all bare, except the evergreens, which were
laden with patches of snow. The trellises stood stripped along the
walls, like clinging black skeletons; and, save for the front walk,
which had been hastily and imperfectly swept, the grounds were piled
high with irregular snow-drifts. The gray of the mansion’s masonry was
almost the color of the brooding overcast sky; and I felt a
premonitory chill of eeriness pass over me as we mounted the shallow
steps that led to the high front door, with its pointed pediment above
the deeply arched entrance.
Sproot, the butler—a little old man with white hair and a heavily
seamed capriform face—admitted us with silent, funereal dignity (he
had evidently been apprised of our coming); and we were ushered at
once into the great gloomy drawing-room whose heavily curtained
windows overlooked the river. A few moments later Chester Greene came
in and greeted Markham fulsomely. Heath and Vance and me he included
in a single supercilious nod.
“Awfully good of you to come, Markham,” he said, with nervous
eagerness, seating himself on the edge of a chair and taking out his
cigarette-holder. “I suppose you’ll want to hold an inquisition first.
Whom’ll I summon as a starter?”
“We can let that go for the moment,” said Markham. “First, I’d like to
know something concerning the servants. Tell me what you can about
them.”
Greene moved restlessly in his chair, and seemed to have difficulty
lighting his cigarette.
“There’s only four. Big house and all that, but we don’t need much
help. Julia always acted as housekeeper, and Ada looked after the
Mater.—To begin with, there’s old Sproot. He’s been butler, seneschal,
and majordomo for us for thirty years. Regular family retainer—kind
you read about in English novels—devoted, loyal, humble, dictatorial,
and snooping. And a damned nuisance, I may add. Then there are two
maids—one to look after the rooms and the other for general service,
though the women monopolize her, mostly for useless fiddle-faddle.
Hemming, the older maid, has been with us ten years. Still wears
corsets and fit-easy shoes. Deep-water Baptist, I
believe—excruciatingly devout. Barton, the other maid, is young and
flighty: thinks she’s irresistible, knows a little _table-d’hôte_
French, and is the kind that’s constantly expecting the males of the
family to kiss her behind the door. Sibella picked her out—she’s just
the kind Sibella would pick out. Been adorning our house and shirking
the hard work for about two years. The cook’s a stodgy German woman, a
typical _Hausfrau_—voluminous bosoms and number-ten feet. Puts in all
her spare time writing to distant nieces and nephews in the upper
reaches of the Rhine basin somewhere; and boasts that the most
fastidious person could eat off her kitchen floor, it’s that clean;
though I’ve never tried it. The old man engaged her a year before he
died; gave orders she was to remain as long as she liked.—There you
have the personnel of the backstairs. Of course, there is a gardener
who loafs about the lawn in summer. He hibernates in a speak-easy up
Harlem way.”
“No chauffeur?”
“A nuisance we dispense with. Julia hated motor-cars, and Rex is
afraid to travel in them—squeamish lad, Rex. I drive my own racer, and
Sibella’s a regular Barney Oldfield. Ada drives, too, when the Mater
isn’t using her and Sibella’s car is idle.—So endeth.”
Markham had been making notes as Greene rambled along with his
information. At length he put out the cigar he had been smoking.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I want to look over the house.”
Greene rose with alacrity and led the way into the main lower hall—a
vaulted, oak-panelled entrance containing two large carved Flemish
tables of the Sambin school, against opposite walls, and several
Anglo-Dutch crown-back chairs. A great Daghestan rug stretched along
the parqueted floor, its faded colors repeated in the heavy draperies
of the archways.
“We have, of course, just come from the drawing-room,” explained
Greene, with a pompous air. “Back of it, down the hall”—he pointed
past the wide marble stairway—“was the governor’s library and den—what
he called his _sanctum sanctorum_. Nobody’s been in it for twelve
years. The Mater has kept it locked up ever since the old man died.
Sentiment of some kind; though I’ve often told her she ought to clean
the place out and make a billiard-room of it. But you can’t move the
Mater, once she’s got an idea in her head. Try it some time when
you’re looking for heavy exercise.”
He walked across the hall and pulled aside the draperies of the
archway opposite to the drawing-room.
“Here’s the reception-room, though we don’t use it much nowadays.
Stuffy, stiff place, and the flue doesn’t draw worth a damn. Every
time we’ve built a fire here, we’ve had to have the cleaners in to
remove the soot from the tapestries.” He waved his cigarette-holder
toward two beautiful Gobelins. “Back there, through those sliding
doors, is the dining-room; and farther on are the butler’s pantry and
the kitchen where one may eat off the floor. Care to inspect the
culinary department?”
“No, I think not,” said Markham. “And I’ll take the kitchen floor for
granted.—Now, can we look at the second floor?”
We ascended the main stairs, which led round a piece of marble
statuary—a Falguière figure, I think—, and emerged into the upper hall
facing the front of the house where three large close-set windows
looked out over the bare trees.
The arrangement of the rooms on the second floor was simple and in
keeping with the broad four-square architecture of the house; but for
the sake of clarification I am embodying in this record a rough
diagram of it; for it was the disposition of these rooms that made
possible the carrying out of the murderer’s hideous and unnatural
plot.
There were six bedrooms on the floor—three on either side of the hall,
each occupied by a member of the family. At the front of the house, on
our left, was the bedroom of Rex Greene, the younger brother. Next to
it was the room occupied by Ada Greene; and at the rear were Mrs.
Greene’s quarters, separated from Ada’s by a fair-sized dressing-room
through which the two apartments communicated. It will be seen from
the diagram that Mrs. Greene’s room projected beyond the main western
elevation of the house, and that in the L thus formed was a small
balustraded stone porch with a narrow flight of stairs, set against
the house, leading to the lawn below. French doors opened upon this
porch from both Ada’s and Mrs. Greene’s rooms.
[Illustration: Plan of second floor. (For the sake of simplification
all bathrooms, clothes-closets, fireplaces, etc., have been omitted.)
Six bedrooms are situated three on each side of a large hallway
running between them, stairs leading down to the main floor, and a
second set of stairs leading up to the top floor behind doors labelled
“swinging door to servants’ stairs.” The two bedrooms in the back
right connect to each other via a dressing room, and both also have
external doors to a stone balcony, from which stairs lead down to the
grounds.]
On the opposite side of the hall were the three rooms occupied by
Julia, Chester, and Sibella, Julia’s room being at the front of the
house, Sibella’s at the rear, and Chester’s in the centre. None of
these rooms communicated with the other. It might also be noted that
the doors to Sibella’s and Mrs. Greene’s rooms were just behind the
main staircase, whereas Chester’s and Ada’s were directly at the head
of the stairs, and Julia’s and Rex’s farther toward the front of the
house. There was a small linen closet between Ada’s room and Mrs.
Greene’s; and at the rear of the hall were the servants’ stairs.
Chester Greene explained this arrangement to us briefly, and then
walked up the hall to Julia’s room.
“You’ll want to look in here first, I imagine,” he said, throwing open
the door. “Nothing’s been touched—police orders. But I can’t see what
good all that stained bed-linen is to any one. It’s a frightful mess.”
The room was large and richly furnished with sage-green
satin-upholstered furniture of the Marie Antoinette period. Opposite
to the door was a canopied bedstead on a dais; and several dark
blotches on the embroidered linen gave mute evidence of the tragedy
that had been enacted there the night before.
Vance, after noting the disposition of the furniture, turned his gaze
upon the old-fashioned crystal chandelier.
“Were those the lights that were on when you found your sister last
night, Mr. Greene?” he asked casually.
The other nodded with surly annoyance.
“And where, may I ask, is the switch?”
“Behind the end of that cabinet.” Greene indifferently indicated a
highly elaborated _armoire_ near the door.
“Invisible—eh, what?” Vance strolled to the _armoire_ and looked
behind it. “An amazin’ burglar!” Then he went up to Markham and spoke
to him in a low voice.
After a moment Markham nodded.
“Greene,” he said, “I wish you’d go to your room and lie down on the
bed just as you were last night when you heard the shot. Then, when I
tap on the wall, get up and do everything you did last night—in just
the way you did it. I want to time you.”
[Illustration: Plan of Julia’s bedroom. The bed faces the door to the
hall, and beside the door is an armoire standing in front of the light
switch. Two other doors lead to a bathroom and a closet.]
The man stiffened, and gave Markham a look of resentful protestation.
“Oh, I say——!” he began. But almost at once he shrugged compliance and
swaggered from the room, closing the door behind him.
Vance took out his watch, and Markham, giving Greene time to reach his
room, rapped on the wall. For what seemed an interminable time we
waited. Then the door opened slightly, and Greene peered round the
casing. Slowly his eyes swept the room; he swung the door further
ajar, stepped inside hesitantly, and moved to the bed.
“Three minutes and twenty seconds,” announced Vance. “Most
disquietin’. . . . What do you imagine, Sergeant, the intruder was
doing in the interim of the two shots?”
“How do I know?” retorted Heath. “Probably groping round the hall
outside looking for the stairs.”
“If he’d groped that length of time he’d have fallen down ’em.”
Markham interrupted this discussion with a suggestion that we take a
look at the servants’ stairway down which the butler had come after
hearing the first shot.
“We needn’t inspect the other bedrooms just yet,” he added, “though
we’ll want to see Miss Ada’s room as soon as the doctor thinks it’s
advisable. When, by the way, will you know his decision, Greene?”
“He said he’d be here at three. And he’s a punctual beggar—a regular
fiend for efficiency. He sent a nurse over early this morning, and
she’s looking after Ada and the Mater now.”
“I say, Mr. Greene,” interposed Vance, “was your sister Julia in the
habit of leaving her door unlocked at night?”
Greene’s jaw dropped a little, and his eyes opened wider.
“By Jove—no! Now that you mention it . . . she always locked herself
in.”
Vance nodded absently, and we passed out into the hall. A thin,
swinging baize door hid the servants’ stair-well at the rear, and
Markham pushed it open.
“Nothing much here to deaden the sound,” he observed.
“No,” agreed Greene. “And old Sproot’s room is right at the head of
the steps. He’s got good ears, too—too damned good sometimes.”
We were about to turn back, when a high-pitched querulous voice issued
from the partly open door on our right.
“Is that you, Chester? What’s all this disturbance? Haven’t I had
enough distraction and worry——?”
Greene had gone to his mother’s door and put his head inside.
“It’s all right, Mater,” he said irritably. “It’s only the police
nosing around.”
“The police?” Her voice was contemptuous. “What do they want? Didn’t
they upset me enough last night? Why don’t they go and look for the
villain instead of congregating outside my door and annoying me?—So,
it’s the police.” Her tone became vindictive. “Bring them in here at
once, and let _me_ talk to them. The police, indeed!”
Greene looked helplessly at Markham, who merely nodded; and we entered
the invalid’s room. It was a spacious chamber, with windows on three
sides, furnished elaborately with all manner of conflicting objects.
My first glance took in an East Indian rug, a buhl cabinet, an
enormous gilded Buddha, several massive Chinese chairs of carved
teak-wood, a faded Persian tapestry, two wrought-iron standard lamps,
and a red-and-gold lacquered high-boy. I looked quickly at Vance, and
surprised an expression of puzzled interest in his eyes.
In an enormous bed, with neither head-piece nor foot-posts, reclined
the mistress of the house, propped up in a semi-recumbent attitude on
a sprawling pile of varicolored silken pillows. She must have been
between sixty-five and seventy, but her hair was almost black. Her
long, chevaline face, though yellowed and wrinkled like ancient
parchment, still radiated an amazing vigor: it reminded me of the
portraits I had seen of George Eliot. About her shoulders was drawn an
embroidered Oriental shawl; and the picture she presented in the
setting of that unusual and diversified room was exotic in the
extreme. At her side sat a rosy-cheeked imperturbable nurse in a stiff
white uniform, making a singular contrast to the woman on the bed.
Chester Greene presented Markham, and let his mother take the rest of
us for granted. At first she did not acknowledge the introduction,
but, after appraising Markham for a moment, she gave him a nod of
resentful forbearance and held out to him a long bony hand.
“I suppose there’s no way to avoid having my home overrun in this
fashion,” she said wearily, assuming an air of great toleration. “I
was just endeavoring to get a little rest. My back pains me so much
to-day, after all the excitement last night. But what do I matter—an
old paralyzed woman like me? No one considers me anyway, Mr. Markham.
But they’re perfectly right. We invalids are of no use in the world,
are we?”
Markham muttered some polite protestation, to which Mrs. Greene paid
not the slightest attention. She had turned, with seemingly great
difficulty, to the nurse.
“Fix my pillows, Miss Craven,” she ordered impatiently, and then
added, in a whining tone: “Even you don’t give a thought to my
comfort.” The nurse complied without a word. “Now, you can go in and
sit with Ada until Doctor Von Blon comes.—How is the dear child?”
Suddenly her voice had assumed a note of simulated solicitude.
“She’s much better, Mrs. Greene.” The nurse spoke in a colorless,
matter-of-fact tone, and passed quietly into the dressing-room.
The woman on the bed turned complaining eyes upon Markham.
“It’s a terrible thing to be a cripple, unable to walk or even stand
alone. Both my legs have been hopelessly paralyzed for ten years.
Think of it, Mr. Markham: I’ve spent ten years in this bed and that
chair”—she pointed to an invalid’s chair in the alcove—“and I can’t
even move from one to the other unless I’m lifted bodily. But I
console myself with the thought that I’m not long for this world; and
I try to be patient. It wouldn’t be so bad, though, if my children
were only more considerate. But I suppose I expect too much. Youth and
health give little thought to the old and feeble—it’s the way of the
world. And so I make the best of it. It’s my fate to be a burden to
every one.”
She sighed and drew the shawl more closely about her.
“You want to ask me some questions perhaps? I don’t see what I can
tell you that will be of any help, but I’m only too glad to do
whatever I can. I haven’t slept a wink, and my back has been paining
me terribly as a result of all this commotion. But I’m not
complaining.”
Markham had stood looking at the old lady sympathetically. Indeed, she
was a pitiful figure. Her long invalidism and solitude had warped what
had probably been a brilliant and generous mind; and she had now
become a kind of introspective martyr, with an exaggerated
sensitiveness to her affliction. I could see that Markham’s instinct
was to leave her immediately with a few consoling words; but his sense
of duty directed him to remain and learn what he could.
“I don’t wish to annoy you more than is absolutely necessary, madam,”
he said in a kindly voice. “But it might help considerably if you
permitted me to put one or two questions.”
“What’s a little annoyance, more or less?” she asked. “I’ve long since
become used to it. Ask me anything you choose.”
Markham bowed with Old World courtesy. “You are very kind, madam.”
Then, after a moment’s pause: “Mr. Greene tells me you did not hear
the shot that was fired in your oldest daughter’s room, but that the
shot in Miss Ada’s room wakened you.”
“That is so.” She nodded slowly. “Julia’s room is a considerable
distance away—across the hall. But Ada always leaves the doors open
between her room and mine in case I should need anything in the night.
Naturally the shot in her room wakened me. . . . Let me see. I must
have just fallen to sleep. My back was giving me a great deal of
trouble last night; I had suffered all day with it, though I of course
didn’t tell any of the children about it. Little they care how their
paralyzed old mother suffers. . . . And then, just as I had managed to
doze off, there came the report, and I was wide-awake again—lying here
helpless, unable to move, and wondering what awful thing might be
going to happen to me. And no one came to see if I was all right; no
one thought of me, alone and defenseless. But then, no one ever thinks
of me.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t any lack of consideration, Mrs. Greene,” Markham
assured her earnestly. “The situation probably drove everything
momentarily from their minds except the two victims of the
shooting.—Tell me this: did you hear any other sounds in Miss Ada’s
room after the shot awakened you?”
“I heard the poor girl fall—at least, it sounded like that.”
“But no other noises of any kind? No footsteps, for instance?”
“Footsteps?” She seemed to make an effort to recall her impressions.
“No; no footsteps.”
“Did you hear the door into the hall open or close, madam?” It was
Vance who put the question.
The woman turned her eyes sharply and glared at him.
“No, I heard no door open or close.”
“That’s rather queer, too, don’t you think?” pursued Vance. “The
intruder must have left the room.”
“I suppose he must have, if he’s not there now,” she replied acidly,
turning again to the District Attorney. “Is there anything else you’d
care to know?”
Markham evidently had perceived the impossibility of eliciting any
vital information from her.
“I think not,” he answered; then added: “You of course heard the
butler and your son here enter Miss Ada’s room?”
“Oh, yes. They made enough noise doing it—they didn’t consider my
feelings in the least. That fuss-budget, Sproot, actually cried out
for Chester like a hysterical woman; and, from the way he raised his
voice over the telephone, one would have thought Doctor Von Blon was
deaf. Then Chester had to rouse the whole house for some unknown
reason. Oh, there was no peace or rest for me last night, I can tell
you! And the police tramped around the house for hours like a drove of
wild cattle. It was positively disgraceful. And here was I—a helpless
old woman—entirely neglected and forgotten, suffering agonies with my
spine.”
After a few commiserating banalities Markham thanked her for her
assistance, and withdrew. As we passed out and walked toward the
stairs I could hear her calling out angrily: “Nurse! Nurse! Can’t you
hear me? Come at once and arrange my pillows. What do you mean by
neglecting me this way . . .?”
The voice trailed off mercifully as we descended to the main hall.