The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van DineЧитать онлайн книгу.
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.
PLAN OF SECOND FLOOR. (For the sake of simplification all bathrooms, clothes-closets, fireplaces, etc., have been omitted.)
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.”
PLAN OF JULIA’S BEDROOM.
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