Vance Argues the Case
(Tuesday, November 9; 5 p. m.)
It was nearly five o’clock when we reached the Criminal Courts
Building. Swacker had lit the old bronze-and-china chandelier of
Markham’s private office, and an atmosphere of eerie gloom pervaded
the room.
“Not a nice family, Markham old dear,” sighed Vance, lying back in one
of the deep leather-upholstered chairs. “Decidedly not a nice family.
A family run to seed, its old vigor vitiated. If the heredit’ry sires
of the contempor’ry Greenes could rise from their sepulchres and look
in upon their present progeny, my word! what a jolly good shock they’d
have! . . . Funny thing how these old families degenerate under the
environment of ease and idleness. There are the Wittelsbachs, and the
Romanoffs, and the Julian-Claudian house, and the Abbassid dynasty—all
examples of phyletic disintegration. . . . And it’s the same with
nations, don’t y’ know. Luxury and unrestrained indulgence are
corruptin’ influences. Look at Rome under the soldier emperors, and
Assyria under Sardanapalus, and Egypt under the later Ramessids, and
the Vandal African empire under Gelimer. It’s very distressin’.”
“Your erudite observations might be highly absorbing to the social
historian,” grumbled Markham, with an undisguised show of
irritability; “but I can’t say they’re particularly edifying, or even
relevant, in the present circumstances.”
“I wouldn’t be too positive on that point,” Vance returned easily. “In
fact, I submit, for your earnest and profound consideration, the
temperaments and internal relationships of the Greene clan, as
pointers upon the dark road of the present investigation. . . .
Really, y’ know”—he assumed a humorsome tone—“it’s most unfortunate
that you and the Sergeant are so obsessed with the idea of social
justice and that sort of thing; for society would be much better off
if such families as the Greenes were exterminated. Still, it’s a
fascinatin’ problem—most fascinatin’.”
“I regret I can’t share your enthusiasm for it.” Markham spoke with
asperity. “The crime strikes me as sordid and commonplace. And if it
hadn’t been for your interference I’d have sent Chester Greene on his
way this morning with some tactful platitudes. But you had to
intercede, with your cryptic innuendoes and mysterious head-waggings;
and I foolishly let myself be drawn into it. Well, I trust you had an
enjoyable afternoon. As for myself, I have three hours’ accumulated
work before me.”
His complaint was an obvious suggestion that we take ourselves off;
but Vance showed no intention of going.
“Oh, I sha’n’t depart just yet,” he announced, with a bantering smile.
“I couldn’t bring myself to leave you in your present state of
grievous error. You need guidance, Markham; and I’ve quite made up my
mind to pour out my flutterin’ heart to you and the Sergeant.”
Markham frowned. He understood Vance so well that he knew the other’s
levity was only superficial—that, indeed, it cloaked some particularly
serious purpose. And the experience of a long, intimate friendship had
taught him that Vance’s actions—however unreasonable they might
appear—were never the result of an idle whim.
“Very well,” he acquiesced. “But I’d be grateful for an economy of
words.”
Vance sighed mournfully.
“Your attitude is so typical of the spirit of breathless speed
existing in this restless day.” He fixed an inquisitive gaze on Heath.
“Tell me, Sergeant: you saw the body of Julia Greene, didn’t you?”
“Sure, I saw it.”
“Was her position in the bed a natural one?”
“How do I know how she generally laid in bed?” Heath was restive and
in bad humor. “She was half sitting up, with a coupla pillows under
her shoulders, and the covers pulled up.”
“Nothing unusual about her attitude?”
“Not that I could see. There hadn’t been a struggle, if that’s what
you mean.”
“And her hands: were they outside or under the covers?”
Heath looked up, mildly astonished.
“They were outside. And, now that you mention it, they had a tight
hold on the spread.”
“Clutching it, in fact?”
“Well, yes.”
Vance leaned forward quickly.
“And her face, Sergeant? Had she been shot in her sleep?”
“It didn’t look that way. Her eyes were wide open, staring straight
ahead.”
“Her eyes were open and staring,” repeated Vance, a note of eagerness
coming into his voice. “What would you say her expression indicated?
Fear? Horror? Surprise?”
Heath regarded Vance shrewdly. “Well, it mighta been any one of ’em.
Her mouth was open, like as if she was surprised at something.”
“And she was clutching the spread with both hands.” Vance’s look
drifted into space. Then slowly he rose and walked the length of the
office and back, his head down. He halted in front of the District
Attorney’s desk, and leaned over, resting both hands on the back of a
chair.
“Listen, Markham. There’s something terrible and unthinkable going on
in that house. No haphazard unknown assassin came in by the front door
last night and shot down those two women. The crime was
planned—thought out. Some one lay in wait—some one who knew his way
about, knew where the light-switches were, knew when every one was
asleep, knew when the servants had retired—knew just when and how to
strike the blow. Some deep, awful motive lies behind that crime. There
are depths beneath depths in what happened last night—obscure fetid
chambers of the human soul. Black hatreds, unnatural desires, hideous
impulses, obscene ambitions are at the bottom of it; and you are only
playing into the murderer’s hands when you sit back and refuse to see
its significance.”
His voice had a curious hushed quality, and it was difficult to
believe that this was the habitually debonair and cynical Vance.
“That house is polluted, Markham. It’s crumbling in decay—not material
decay, perhaps, but a putrefaction far more terrible. The very heart
and essence of that old house is rotting away. And all the inmates are
rotting with it, disintegrating in spirit and mind and character.
They’ve been polluted by the very atmosphere they’ve created. This
crime, which you take so lightly, was inevitable in such a setting. I
only wonder it was not more terrible, more vile. It marked one of the
tertiary stages of the general dissolution of that abnormal
establishment.”
He paused, and extended his hand in a hopeless gesture.
“Think of the situation. That old, lonely, spacious house, exuding the
musty atmosphere of dead generations, faded inside and out, run down,
dingy, filled with ghosts of another day, standing there in its
ill-kept grounds, lapped by the dirty waters of the river. . . . And
then think of those six ill-sorted, restless, unhealthy beings
compelled to live there in daily contact for a quarter of a
century—such was old Tobias Greene’s perverted idealism. And they’ve
lived there, day in and day out, in that mouldy miasma of
antiquity—unfit to meet the conditions of any alternative, too weak or
too cowardly to strike out alone; held by an undermining security and
a corrupting ease; growing to hate the very sight of one another,
becoming bitter, spiteful, jealous, vicious; wearing down each other’s
nerves to the raw; consumed with resentment, aflame with hate,
thinking evil—complaining, fighting, snarling. . . . Then, at last,
the breaking-point—the logical, ineluctable figuration of all this
self-feeding, ingrowing hatred.”
“All of that is easy to understand,” agreed Markham. “But, after all,
your conclusion is wholly theoretic, not to say literary.—By what
tangible links do you connect last night’s shooting with the
admittedly abnormal situation at the Greene mansion?”
“There are no tangible links—that’s the horror of it. But the joinders
are there, however shadowy. I began to sense them the minute I entered
the house; and all this afternoon I was reaching for them blindly. But
they eluded me at every turn. It was like a house of mazes and false
passages and trapdoors and reeking oubliettes: nothing normal, nothing
sane—a house in a nightmare, peopled by strange, abnormal creatures,
each reflecting the subtle, monstrous horror that broke forth last
night and went prowling about the old hallways. Didn’t you sense it?
Didn’t you see the vague shape of this abomination continually flash
out and disappear as we talked to these people and watched them
battling against their own hideous thoughts and suspicions?”
Markham moved uneasily and straightened a pile of papers before him.
Vance’s unwonted gravity had affected him.
“I understand perfectly what you mean,” he said. “But I don’t see that
your impressions bring us any nearer to a new theory of the crime. The
Greene mansion is unhealthy—that’s granted—and so, no doubt, are the
people in it. But I’m afraid you’ve been oversusceptible to its
atmosphere. You talk as if last night’s crime were comparable to the
poisoning orgies of the Borgias, or the Marquise de Brinvilliers
affair, or the murder of Drusus and Germanicus, or the suffocation of
the York princes in the Tower. I’ll admit the setting is consonant
with that sort of stealthy, romantic crime; but, after all,
housebreakers and bandits are shooting people senselessly every week
throughout the country, in very much the same way the two Greene women
were shot.”
“You’re shutting your eyes to the facts, Markham,” Vance declared
earnestly. “You’re overlooking several strange features of last
night’s crime—the horrified, astounded attitude of Julia at the moment
of death; the illogical interval between the two shots; the fact that
the lights were on in both rooms; Ada’s story of that hand reaching
for her; the absence of any signs of a forced entry——”
“What about those footprints in the snow?” interrupted Heath’s
matter-of-fact voice.
“What about them, indeed?” Vance wheeled about. “They’re as
incomprehensible as the rest of this hideous business. Some one walked
to and from the house within a half-hour of the crime; but it was some
one who knew he could get in quietly and without disturbing any one.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about that,” asserted the practical
Sergeant. “There are four servants in the house, and any one of ’em
could’ve been in on the job.”
Vance smiled ironically.
“And this accomplice in the house, who so generously opened the front
door at a specified hour, failed to inform the intruder where the loot
was, and omitted to acquaint him with the arrangement of the house;
with the result that, once he was inside, he went astray, overlooked
the dining-room, wandered up-stairs, went groping about the hall, got
lost in the various bedrooms, had a seizure of panic, shot two women,
turned on the lights by switches hidden behind the furniture, made his
way down-stairs without a sound when Sproot was within a few feet of
him, and walked out the front door to freedom! . . . A strange
burglar, Sergeant. And an even stranger inside accomplice.—No; your
explanation won’t do—decidedly it won’t do.” He turned back to
Markham. “And the only way you’ll ever find the true explanation for
those shootings is by understanding the unnatural situation that
exists in the house itself.”
“But we know the situation, Vance,” Markham argued patiently. “I’ll
admit it’s an unusual one. But it’s not necessarily criminal.
Antagonistic human elements are often thrown together; and a mutual
hate is generated as a result. But mere hate is rarely a motive for
murder; and it certainly does not constitute evidence of criminal
activity.”
“Perhaps not. But hatred and enforced propinquity may breed all manner
of abnormalities—outrageous passions, abominable evils, devilish
intrigues. And in the present case there are any number of curious and
sinister facts that need explaining——”
“Ah! Now you’re becoming more tangible. Just what are these facts that
call for explanation?”
Vance lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the table.
“For instance, why did Chester Greene come here in the first place and
solicit your help? Because of the disappearance of the gun? Maybe; but
I doubt if it is the whole explanation. And what about the gun itself?
Did it disappear? Or did Chester secrete it? Deuced queer about that
gun. And Sibella said she saw it last week. But did she see it? We’ll
know a lot more about the case when we can trace the peregrinations of
that revolver.—And why did Chester hear the first shot so readily,
when Rex, in the next room to Ada’s, says he failed to hear the second
shot?—And that long interval between the two reports will need some
explaining.—And there’s Sproot—the multilingual butler who happened to
be reading Martial—Martial, by all that’s holy!—when the grim business
took place, and came directly to the scene without meeting or hearing
any one.—And just what significance attaches to the pious Hemming’s
oracular pronouncements about the Lord of hosts smiting the Greenes as
he did the children of Babylon? She has some obscure religious notion
in her head—which, after all, may not be so obscure.—And the German
cook: there’s a woman with, as we euphemistically say, a past. Despite
her phlegmatic appearance, she’s not of the servant class; yet she’s
been feeding the Greenes dutifully for over a dozen years. You recall
her explanation of how she came to the Greenes? Her husband was a
friend of old Tobias’s; and Tobias gave orders she was to remain as
cook as long as she desired. She needs explaining, Markham—and a
dashed lot of it.—And Rex, with his projecting parietals and his
wambly body and his periodic fits. Why did he get so excited when we
questioned him? He certainly didn’t act like an innocent and
uncomprehending spectator of an attempted burglary.—And again I
mention the lights. Who turned them on, and why? And in both rooms! In
Julia’s room _before_ the shot was fired, for she evidently saw the
assassin and understood his purpose; and in Ada’s room, _after_ the
shooting! Those are facts which fairly shriek for explanation; for
without an explanation they’re mad, irrational, utterly
incredible.—And why wasn’t Von Blon at home in the middle of the night
when Sproot phoned him? And how did it happen he nevertheless arrived
so promptly? Coincidence? . . . And, by the by, Sergeant: was that
double set of footprints like the single spoor of the doctor’s?”
“There wasn’t any way of telling. The snow was too flaky.”
“It probably doesn’t matter particularly, anyhow.” Vance again faced
Markham and resumed his recapitulation. “And then there are the points
of difference in these two attacks. Julia was shot from the front when
she was in bed, whereas Ada was shot in the back after she had risen
from bed, although the murderer had ample time to go to her and take
aim while she was still lying down. Why did he wait silently until the
girl got up and approached him? How did he dare wait at all after he
had killed Julia and alarmed the house? Does that strike you as panic?
Or as cool-headedness?—And how did Julia’s door come to be unlocked at
that particular time? That’s something I especially want
clarified.—And perhaps you noticed, Markham, that Chester himself went
to summon Sibella to the interview in the drawing-room, and that he
remained with her a considerable time. Why, now, did he send Sproot
for Rex, and fetch Sibella personally? And why the delay? I yearn for
an explanation of what passed between them before they eventually
appeared.—And why was Sibella so definite that there wasn’t a burglar,
and yet so evasive when we asked her to suggest a counter-theory? What
underlay her satirical frankness when she held up each member of the
Greene household, including herself, as a possible suspect?—And then
there are the details of Ada’s story. Some of them are amazing,
incomprehensible, almost fabulous. There was no apparent sound in the
room; yet she was conscious of a menacing presence. And that
outstretched hand and the shuffling footsteps—we simply must have an
explanation of those things. And her hesitancy about saying whether
she thought it was a man or a woman; and Sibella’s evident belief that
the girl thought it was she. That wants explaining, Markham.—And
Sibella’s hysterical accusation against Ada. What lay behind that?—And
don’t forget that curious scene between Sibella and Von Blon when he
reproached her for her outburst. That was devilish odd. There’s some
intimacy there—_ça saute aux yeux_. You noticed how she obeyed him.
And you doubtless observed, too, that Ada is rather fond of the
doctor: snuggled up to him figuratively during the performance, opened
her eyes on him wistfully, looked to him for protection. Oh, our
little Ada has flutterings in his direction. And yet he adopts the
hovering professional-bedside manner of a high-priced medico toward
her, whereas he treats Sibella very much as Chester might if he had
the courage.”
Vance inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
“Yes, Markham, there are many things that must be satisfactorily
accounted for before I can believe in your hypothetical burglar.”
Markham sat for a while, engrossed in his thoughts.
“I’ve listened to your Homeric catalogue, Vance,” he said at length,
“but I can’t say that it inflames me. You’ve suggested a number of
interesting possibilities, and raised several points that might bear
looking into. However, the only potential weight of your argument lies
in an accumulation of items which, taken separately, are not
particularly impressive. A plausible answer might be found for each
one of them. The trouble is, the integers of your summary are without
a connecting thread, and consequently must be regarded as separate
units.”
“That legal mind of yours!” Vance rose and paced up and down. “An
accumulation of queer and unexplained facts centring about a crime is
no more impressive than each separate item in the total! Well, well! I
give up. I renounce all reason. I fold up my tent like the Arabs and
as silently steal away.” He took up his coat. “I leave you to your
fantastic, delirious burglar, who walks without keys into a house and
steals nothing, who knows where electric switches are hidden but can’t
find a staircase, who shoots women and then turns up the lights. When
you find him, my dear Lycurgus, you should, in all humaneness, send
him to the psychopathic ward. He’s quite unaccountable, I assure you.”
Markham, despite his opposition, had not been unimpressed. Vance
unquestionably had undermined to some extent his belief in a
housebreaker. But I could readily understand why he was reluctant to
abandon this theory until it had been thoroughly tested. His next
words, in fact, explained his attitude.
“I’m not denying the remote possibility that this affair may go deeper
than appears. But there’s too little to go on at present to warrant an
investigation along other than routine lines. We can’t very well stir
up an ungodly scandal by raking the members of a prominent family over
the coals, when there’s not a scintilla of evidence against any one of
them. It’s too unjust and dangerous a proceeding. We must at least
wait until the police have finished their investigation. Then, if
nothing develops, we can again take inventory and decide how to
proceed. . . . How long, Sergeant, do you figure on being busy?”
Heath took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it thoughtfully.
“That’s hard to say, sir. Dubois’ll finish up his finger-printing
to-morrow, and we’re checking up on the regulars as fast as we can.
Also, I’ve got two men digging up the records of the Greene servants.
It may take a lot of time, and it may go quick. Depends on the breaks
we get.”
Vance sighed.
“And it was such a neat, fascinatin’ crime! I’ve rather been looking
forward to it, don’t y’ know, and now you talk of prying into the
early amours of serving-maids and that sort of thing. It’s most
disheartenin’.”
He buttoned his ulster about him and walked to the door.
“Ah, well, there’s nothing for me to do while you Jasons are launched
on your quaint quest. I think I’ll retire and resume my translation of
Delacroix’s ‘Journal.’”
But Vance was not destined then to finish this task he had had in mind
so long. Three days later the front pages of the country’s press
carried glaring head-lines telling of a second grim and unaccountable
tragedy at the old Greene mansion, which altered the entire character
of the case and immediately lifted it into the realm of the foremost
_causes célèbres_ of modern times. After this second blow had fallen
all ideas of a casual burglar were banished. There could no longer be
any doubt that a hidden death-dealing horror stalked through the dim
corridors of that fated house.