The Bishop Murder Case Read online

  Vance leaned forward seriously. “And, Markham, there are other reasons why we may eliminate strangers or casual prowlers. The person who sent Robin to his Maker must have been privy to the exact state of affairs in the Dillard house this morning between a quarter past eleven and twenty minutes to twelve. He knew that Pyne and the old professor were alone there. He knew that Belle Dillard was not roaming about the premises. He knew that Beedle was away and could neither hear him nor surprise him. He knew that Robin—his victim—was there, and that Sperling had departed. Moreover, he knew something of the lie of the land—the situation of the archery room, for instance; for it’s only too plain that Robin was killed in that room. No one who wasn’t familiar with all these details would have dared enter the grounds and staged a spectacular murder. I tell you, Markham, it was someone very close to the Dillard ménage—someone who was able to find out just what conditions obtained in that household this morning.”

  “What about that scream of Mrs. Drukker’s?”

  “Ah, what about it, indeed? Mrs. Drukker’s window may have been a factor that the murderer overlooked. Or perhaps he knew about it and decided to take that one chance of being seen. On the other hand, we don’t know whether the lady screamed or not. She says no; Drukker says yes. They both have an ulterior motive for what they poured into our trustin’ ears. Drukker may have told of the scream by way of proving he was at home between eleven and twelve; and Mrs. Drukker may have denied it for fear he wasn’t home. It’s very much of an olla podrida. But it doesn’t matter. The main point I’m trying to make is that only an intimate of the Dillard house could have done this devilish business.”

  “We have too few facts to warrant that conclusion,” asserted Markham. “Chance may have played a part—”

  “Oh, I say, old man! Chance may work out to a few permutations but not to twenty.—And there is that note left in the mailbox. The murderer even knew Robin’s middle name.”

  “Assuming, of course, that the murderer wrote the note.”

  “Do you prefer to assume that some balmy joker found out about the crime through telepathy or crystal-gazing, hied to a typewriter, composed a dithyramb, returned hotfooted to the house, and for no good reason took the terrific risk of being seen putting the paper in the mailbox?”

  Before Markham could answer, Heath entered the lounge room and hurried to our corner. That he was worried and uneasy was obvious. With scarcely a word of greeting he handed a typewritten envelope to Markham.

  “That was received by the World in the late afternoon mail. Quinan, the police reporter of the World, brought it to me a little while ago; and he says that the Times and the Herald also got copies of it. The letters were stamped at one o’clock today, so they were probably posted between eleven and twelve. What’s more, Mr. Markham, they were mailed in the neighborhood of the Dillard house, for they went through Post Office Station ‘N’ on West 69th Street.”

  Markham withdrew the enclosure from the envelope. Suddenly his eyes opened wide, and the muscles about his mouth tightened. Without looking up he handed the letter to Vance. It consisted of a single sheet of typewriting paper, and the words printed on it were identical to those on the note left in the Dillard mailbox. Indeed, the communication was an exact duplicate of the other:—“Joseph Cochrane Robin is dead. Who Killed Cock Robin? Sperling means sparrow.—THE BISHOP.”

  Vance scarcely glanced at the paper.

  “Quite in keeping, don’t y’ know,” he said indifferently. “The Bishop was afraid the public might miss the point of his joke, so he explained it to the press.”

  “Joke, did you say, Mr. Vance?” asked Heath bitterly. “It ain’t the kind of joke I’m used to. This case gets crazier—”

  “Exactly, Sergeant. A crazy joke.”

  A uniformed boy stepped up to the district attorney and, bending over his shoulder discreetly, whispered something.

  “Bring him here right away,” ordered Markham. Then to us: “It’s Arnesson. He’ll probably have those specimens of typing.” A shadow had settled on his face, and he glanced again at the note Heath had brought him. “Vance,” he said in a low voice, “I’m beginning to believe that this case may turn out to be as terrible as you think. I wonder if the typing will correspond… ”

  But when the note was compared with the specimens Arnesson brought, no similarity whatever could be discerned. Not only were the typing and the ink different from those of either Pardee’s or Drukker’s machine, but the paper did not match any one of the samples that Arnesson had secured.

  Footnote

  *Saturday was a “half-day” at the district attorney’s office. Swacker was Markham’s secretary.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Act Two

  (Monday, April 11; 11.30 a.m.)

  THERE IS NO need to recall here the nationwide sensation caused by Robin’s murder. Everyone remembers how that startling tragedy was featured in the country’s press. It was referred to by various designations. Some newspapers called it the Cock Robin murder. Others, more alliterative but less accurate,* termed it the Mother Goose murder. But the signature of the typewritten notes appealed strongly to the journalistic sense of mystery; and in time the killing of Robin came to be known as the Bishop murder case. Its strange and fearful combination of horror and nursery jargon inflamed the public’s imagination; and the sinister and insane implications of its details affected the entire country like some grotesque nightmare whose atmosphere could not be shaken off.

  During the week following the discovery of Robin’s body, the detectives of the homicide bureau, as well as the detectives connected with the district attorney’s office, were busy night and day pushing their inquiries. The receipt of the duplicate Bishop notes by the leading New York morning papers had dissipated whatever ideas Heath may have held as to Sperling’s guilt; and though he refused to put his official imprimatur on the young man’s innocence, he threw himself, with his usual gusto and pertinacity, into the task of finding another and more plausible culprit. The investigation which he organized and superintended was as complete as had been that of the Greene murder case. No avenue which held the meagerest hope of results was overlooked; and the report he drew up would have given joy even to those meticulous criminologists of the University of Lausanne.

  On the afternoon of the day of the murder he and his men had searched for the cloth that had been used to wipe up the blood in the archery room; but no trace of it was found. Also, a thorough examination of the Dillard basement was made in the hope of finding other clues; but although Heath had put the task in the hands of experts, the result was negative. The only point brought to light was that the fiber rug near the door had recently been moved so as to cover the cleansed spot on the cement floor. This fact, however, merely substantiated the sergeant’s earlier observation.

  The postmortem report of Doctor Doremus lent color to the now officially accepted theory that Robin had been killed in the archery room and then placed on the range. The autopsy showed that the blow on the back of his skull had been a particularly violent one and had been made with a heavy rounded instrument, resulting in a depressed fracture quite different from the fissured fracture caused by striking a flat surface. A search was instituted for the weapon with which the blow had been dealt; but no likely instrument was turned up.

  Though Beedle and Pyne were questioned by Heath several times, nothing new was learned from them. Pyne insisted that he had been upstairs the entire morning in Arnesson’s room except for a few brief absences to the linen closet and the front door, and clung tenaciously to his denial that he had touched either the body or the bow when sent by Professor Dillard to find Sperling. The sergeant, however, was not entirely satisfied with the man’s testimony.

  “That bleary-eyed old cormorant has got something up his sleeve,” he told Markham disgustedly. “But it would take the rubber hose and the water cure to make him spill it.”

  A canvass of all the houses in 75th Street between West End Avenue and River
side Drive was made in the hope of finding a tenant who had noticed someone entering or emerging from the Dillard wall gate during the forenoon. But nothing was gained by this tedious campaign. Pardee, it seemed, was the only resident within view of the Dillard house who had observed anyone in the neighborhood that morning. In fact, after several days of arduous inquiries along this line the sergeant realized that he would have to proceed without any outside or fortuitous assistance.

  The various alibis of the seven persons whom Vance had tabulated in his notation for Markham were gone into as thoroughly as circumstances would permit. It was obviously impossible to check them completely, for, in the main, they were based solely on the statements of the individuals involved. Moreover, the investigation had to be made with the utmost care lest suspicion be aroused. The results of these inquiries were as follows:

  1. Arnesson had been seen in the university library by various people, including an assistant librarian and two students. But the time covered by their evidence was neither consecutive nor specific as to the hour.

  2. Belle Dillard had played several sets of tennis at the public courts at 119th Street and Riverside Drive, but because there had been more than four in her party she had twice relinquished her place to a friend; and none of the players could state positively that she had remained at the courts during these periods.

  3. The time that Drukker departed from the archery room was definitely determined by Sperling; but no one could be found who had seen him thereafter. He admitted he had met no one he knew in the park but insisted he had stopped for a few minutes to play with some strange children.

  4. Pardee had been alone in his study. His old cook and his Japanese valet had been in the rear of the house and had not seen him until lunchtime. His alibi, therefore, was purely a negative one.

  5. Mrs. Drukker’s word had to be accepted as to her whereabouts that morning, for no one had seen her between nine-thirty, when Drukker went to call on Arnesson, and one o’clock, when the cook brought up her luncheon.

  6. Beedle’s alibi was checked with fairly satisfactory completeness. Pardee had seen her leave the house at 10.35; and she was remembered by several of the hucksters at the Jefferson Market between eleven and twelve.

  7. The fact that Sperling had taken the 11.40 train to Scarsdale was verified; therefore he would have had to leave the Dillard house at the time he stated—namely: 11.15. The determination of this point, however, was merely a matter of routine, for he had been practically eliminated from the case. But if, as Heath explained, it had been found that he had not taken the 11.40 train, he would have again become an important possibility.

  Pursuing his investigations along more general lines, the sergeant went into the histories and associations of the various persons involved. The task was not a difficult one. All were well known, and information concerning them was readily accessible; but not one item was unearthed that could be regarded as even remotely throwing any light on Robin’s murder. Nothing transpired to give so much as a hint to the motive for the crime; and after a week’s intensive inquiry and speculation the case was still cloaked in seemingly impenetrable mystery.

  Sperling had not been released. The prima facie evidence against him, combined with his absurd confession, made impossible such a step on the part of the authorities. Markham, however, had held an unofficial conference with the attorneys whom Sperling’s father had engaged to handle the case, and some sort of a “gentleman’s agreement” had, I imagine, been reached; for although the state made no move to apply for an indictment (despite the fact that the grand jury was sitting at the time), the defense lawyers did not institute habeas corpus proceedings. All the indications pointed to the supposition that both Markham and Sperling’s attorneys were waiting for the real culprit to be apprehended.

  Markham had had several interviews with the members of the Dillard household in a persistent effort to bring out some trivial point that might lead to a fruitful line of inquiry; and Pardee had been summoned to the district attorney’s office to make an affidavit as to what he had observed from his window on the morning of the tragedy. Mrs. Drukker had been interrogated again; but not only did she emphatically deny having looked out of her window that morning but she scoffed at the idea that she had screamed.

  Drukker, when requestioned, modified somewhat his former testimony. He explained that he might have been mistaken as to the source of the scream, and suggested that it could have come from the street or from one of the court windows of the apartment house. In fact, he said, it was highly unlikely that his mother had uttered the scream, for when he went to her door a moment later, she was humming an old German nursery song from Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Markham, convinced that nothing further was to be learned from either him or Mrs. Drukker, finally concentrated on the Dillard house itself.

  Arnesson attended the informal conferences held in Markham’s office; but for all his voluble and cynical observations, he appeared to be as much at sea as the rest of us. Vance chaffed him good-naturedly about the mathematical formula that was to solve the case, but Arnesson insisted that a formula could not be worked out until all the factors of the theorem were available. He appeared to regard the entire affair as a kind of Juvenalian lark; and Markham on several occasions gave vent to his exasperation. He reproached Vance for having made Arnesson an unofficial confrère in the investigation, but Vance defended himself on the ground that sooner or later Arnesson would supply some piece of seemingly irrelevant information that could be used as an advantageous point de départ.

  “His crimino-mathematical theory is, of course, rubbish,” said Vance. “Psychology—not abstract science—will eventually reduce this conundrum to its elements. But we need material to go on, and Arnesson knows the inwardness of the Dillard home better than we can ever know it. He knows the Drukkers, and he knows Pardee; and it goes without saying that a man who has had the academic honors heaped on him that he has possesses an unusually keen mind. As long as he gives his thought and attention to the case, there’s the chance that he’ll hit upon something of vital importance to us.”

  “You may be right,” grumbled Markham. “But the man’s derisive attitude gets on my nerves.”

  “Be more catholic,” urged Vance. “Consider his ironies in relation to his scientific speculations. What could be more natural than that a man who projects his mind constantly into the vast interplanet’ry reaches, and deals with light-years and infinities and hyperphysical dimensions, should sniff derisively at the infinitesimals of this life?…Stout fella, Arnesson. Not homey and comfortable, perhaps, but dashed interestin’.”

  Vance himself had taken the case with unwonted seriousness. His Menander translations had been definitely put aside. He became moody and waspish—a sure sign that his mind was busy with an absorbing problem. After dinner each night he went into his library and read for hours—not the classic and aesthetic volumes on which he generally spent his time, but such books as Bernard Hart’s The Psychology of Insanity, Freud’s Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Coriat’s Abnormal Psychology and Repressed Emotions, Lippo’s Komik und Humor, Daniel A. Huebsch’s The Murder Complex, Janet’s Les Obsessions et la Psychasthènie, Donath’s Über Arithmomanie, Riklin’s Wish Fulfillment and Fairy Tales, Leppman’s Die forensische Bedeutung der Zwangsvorstellungen, Kuno Fischer’s Über den Witz, Erich Wulffen’s Kriminalpsychologie, Hollenden’s The Insanity of Genius, and Groos’s Die Spiele des Menschen.

  He spent hours going over the police reports. He called twice at the Dillards’ and on one occasion visited Mrs. Drukker in company with Belle Dillard. He had a long discussion one night with Drukker and Arnesson on de Sitter’s conception of physical space as a Lobatchewskian pseudosphere, his object being, I surmised, to acquaint himself with Drukker’s mentality. He read Drukker’s book, World Lines in Multidimensional Continua, and spent nearly an entire day studying Janowski’s and Tarrasch’s analyses of the Pardee gambit.

  On Sunday—eight days af
ter the murder of Robin—he said to me, “Eheu, Van! This problem is unbelievedly subtle. No ordin’ry investigation will ever probe it. It lies in a strange territ’ry of the brain; and its superficial childishness is its most terrible and bafflin’ aspect. Nor is the perpetrator going to be content with a single coup. Cock Robin’s death serves no definitive end. The perverted imagination that concocted this beastly crime is insatiable; and unless we can expose the abnormal psychological mechanism back of it, there will be more grim jokes to contend with… ”

  The very next morning his prognostication was verified. We went to Markham’s office at eleven o’clock to hear Heath’s report and to discuss further lines of action. Though nine days had passed since Robin had been found murdered, no progress had been made in the case, and the newspapers had grown bitter in their criticisms of the police and the district attorney’s office. It was therefore with considerable depression that Markham greeted us that Monday morning. Heath had not yet arrived; but when he came a few minutes later, it was obvious that he, too, was discouraged.

  “We run up against a brick wall, sir, every way we turn,” he repined when he had outlined the results of his men’s activities. “There ain’t a sign of a motive, and outside of Sperling there’s nobody on the landscape that we can hang anything on. I’m coming to the conclusion that it was some stickup man who ambled into the archery room that morning and messed things up.”

  “ ‘Stickup’ men, Sergeant,” countered Vance, “are deuced unimaginative, and they’re without a sense of humor; whereas the johnny who sent Robin on the long, long trail had both imagination and humor. He wasn’t content merely to kill Robin: he had to turn the act into an insane joke. Then, lest the public wouldn’t see the point, he wrote explanat’ry letters to the press.—Does that sound like the procedure of an itinerant thug?”