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.[1]
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.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;[2]
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.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.”[3]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;[4]
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[5]—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.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[6]
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.”
“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.’”[1]
“The Greene Murder Case” (Scribners, 1928).[2]
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.[3]
The book Vance referred to was that excellent and comprehensive
treatise, “Archery,” by Robert P. Elmer, M.D.[4]
“The Benson Murder Case” (Scribners, 1926).[5]
“The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” (Scribners, 1927).[6]
Though Laplace is best known for his “Méchanique Célestee,”
Vance was here referring to his masterly work, “Théorie Analytique
des Probabilités,” which Herschel called “the ne plus ultra of
mathematical skill and power.”