[PREV - SECURING_RIGHTS] [TOP]
GREENE_MURDER
December 22, 2002
Notes upon a bad novel:
"The Greene Murder Case" (1928)
by S.S. van Dine
I thought it was time I rounded out
my literary education by actually
reading a "Philo Vance" mystery
novel.
Philo Vance was quite popular in GREENE_MURDER_FILM
his day... one of these novels
was made into a film with William I was thinking of the "The
Powell as Vance. Kennel Club Murders", but
actually William Powell did
Circa 1929: the old guard several Vance movies...
was still doing drawing including "The Greene Murder
room murders, though Case" (1929).
Hammett and the Black Mask
gang were trying to drag These were made pretty quickly, and
things down into the William Powell's rendition of Philo
hardboiled gutter. Vance as a somnulent undertaker was
not his finest performance.
Raymond Chandler wrote
eloquently of the general
awfulness of "golden age" "The Simple Art of Murder"
detective fiction, with by Raymond Chandler
emphasis on the insanely (November 1945,
unrealistic degree of The Atlantic Monthly)
stupidity required by
the police. He also comments:
In this respect, the novel does "Philo Vance --
not disappoint. The remarkable probably the most
stupidity of the police is in asinine character in
evidence almost from the first detective fiction"
page... well, maybe the first
page of the second chapter.
The actual first chapter is an
overgrowth of verbal fungus from
the incredibly useless "Watson"
figure that narrates the story.
But I digress.
Let's take the initial situation: two
people have been shot in a mansion
located in Manhattan on the East River.
One side of the mansion is in fact
hanging over the river. It is a house
full of older siblings, all compelled
to live together by the terms of a
mindless (and totally unbelievable)
will. First, one woman was shot and
killed, and then the murderer evidently
walked to another bedroom and shot and
wounded another woman. Both were
contact wounds: the first woman was
shot in the front, and the second was
shot in the back. The fact that the
killer could approach the first woman
in her bedroom late at night and hold a
gun up against her would seem to
indicate that she knew the assailant
(the lights were found on it the room,
and the light switch is fairly
difficult to access).
Nevertheless, the police are enamored of
the idea that this crime must have been
committed by a panicked burglar from
outside the house. Consider that there
was also a longish pause of several
minutes between the first and the second
gunshot, but nevertheless, the police
insist that both were done by the burglar
as he was running about looking for a way
out (he evidently kept missing the main
stairs which were gaping in the middle of
the hallway, and preferred to open doors
at random).
What leads the police to assume it was an
outside agency? Well, there was a heavy
snowfall that night, leaving a thick
layer of light, flaky snow outside.
There's two sets of footprints on the
front walk, which could be this burglar
running into the house (which was entered
without breaking... so he's got a key, or
it was a slick lock-picking job) and then
running out. But the prints don't
overlap. So could it be they were made
by someone leaving and then returning to
the house? Perhaps someone who wanted to
hold open the possibility that it was an
outside agency that did it?
Naaah. Or so say the cops. Now, our
hero, Philo Vance, a well respected
amateur detective and close friend of the
DA, very carefully points out the severe
implausibility of the burglar theory. For
no apparent reason they insist that it
can't be a member of the family. Ah,
could it be that there's political
pressure on them to adopt this theory by
the oh so respectable and quite rich
Greene family? No, not at all: Raymond
Chandler is many years in our future.
There's at least one prominent member of
the Greene family that's leaning on the
DA to look into something besides this
burglar theory.
But okay, I tried to ignore the
intellectually-challenged porcine
problem, and I just focused on the
puzzle at hand. This being a good (sort
of) old-fashioned mystery, it's actually
supposed to be possible to reason out
the identity of the killer. So here's
my first stab at it:
My first thought is that this is an
interesting setting: there actually are
some places in New York built right up
against the East River: you can see
some of them from the pedestrian path
attached to the side of the 59th Street
bridge (though that foot path seems a (Now the foot path has
well-kept secret, and you really need been moved to the north
to look for it). I've never seen a side of the bridge, and
"mansion" like this there, but this was it's probably much
in the 1920s. Things change (they easier to find.)
probably hadn't even built the East
Side Highway way back then).
Does the setting suggest something?
Sure: it's no problem at all
for someone to dispose of
something in this house,
provided they have access to ~~
one of the windows on the ~ ~~ ~~
river side: just drop it over The East River ~~
the sill, and it's ~~ ~~
effectively gone. __
_____==___________/ \_________==______
~~~ | | | | ~~~
So that's my first theory: | | guy | my hot |
the murderer shoots the two | murdered | pushing | suspect: |
people, then gets to a " woman | for | the "
river-facing window, and " | invest- | modern "
tosses the gun (and possibly | bang! #1 | igation | woman |
some other things) into the | | | |
water. There are six |_____/ _____|____/ _____|__/ ________|
bedrooms on the second floor, | |
three of them on the river | |
side. The first person who " -----------| |
was shot is over on the river " Stairs |||||||||||| |
side -- the killer obviously " ---> |||||||||||| |
still has the gun when | -----------| |
leaving that room to shoot | |
the second person, and |____ ___________ ________ ________|
there's not a lot of time for | \ | \ | \ |
the complicated doubling-back | | | |
that would be needed to throw | some | wounded | big |
something out of that window. " red | woman | mama \
So, that leaves two suspects " shirt | | "
with bedrooms on the river, a | | bang! #2 | "
man and a woman. The man is | | | /
the one who's been pushing |____==______|____==__ _|_ |
for a more through --> [[[[[[[ / | |
investigation, so he's not stairs | / |
such a likely candidate. The to |_____|___===____|
woman then, is my hot balcony
suspect: she shot two people, balcony
then had to run back to her
room, and once there disposed
of the gun out the window.
It took me some time to understand
the fundamental flaw with this
theory of mine: the police don't
bother to look for the gun.
Two people were shot with a 32,
with no gun found on the scene.
One guy in the house says he
used to have a 32, but he
doesn't know what happened to
it. And the cops *don't* tear
the place apart just to make
sure that there's no 32 stuffed
behind a couch some place.
Burglar theory or no, you would
think they would check on a
little detail like this. But as
it turns out there's an entire
room in the house that they
don't even glance inside: the
woman who runs the house just (And for those folks in
says it's been locked ever since the audience who think
her husband died, and she that this novel can
objects to them peeking in actually be spoiled,
there. And they just go "oh, here's one of those
okay, we won't bother with that wonderful SPOILERS
warnings).
Anyway, the cops wait for
another round of killings to
happen with the same gun, It may shock you to hear
before they really search that this locked library
the place... and the locked was actually used by the
library gets left until murderer to hide stuff.
rather late in the story. I
think after the fourth round
of killings, though I may
have lost count (yes: there
are that many killings.
This is one of those stories
where there are only a few
suspects left alive by the
time you get to the end).
Now, let's consider another suspect for
a moment. How about the woman who was
wounded? Being good mystery novel
fans, we of course wonder if this
"wounded" business could just be
designed to throw us off the scent.
Oh, but she was shot in the back,
wounded really badly (the doc says it
just missed the lung), and no gun was
found on the scene... what kind of
idiot would really think this woman was
a plausible suspect?
(Here's another SPOILERS warning.)
The author.
So how could this villainess possibly
fake this attack on her life?
(And you know what? Just for hypocrisy's
sake, I'm going to give a third SPOILERS
warning, but this one is sincere, because
I'm about to blow a detail of one of
the original Sherlock Holmes stories.
If by some chance you haven't read them,
then don't read this.)
The murderer has pulled a "Thor Bridge". You know
the Holmes story: it looks like someone has been
murdered on a stone bridge, but Holmes spots a
little nick in the parapet, and realizes that the
person has committed suicide but made it look like
murder. A rock was tied to the gun and then
tossed over the edge so that after the shot was
fired the weight pulled the gun over the edge and
into the drink.
The Greene variation of this: the woman left
her bedroom window open six inches or so,
tied a weight to the gun, reached around
and shot herself in the back, and let the
weight pull the gun out the window, over
the wall of the balcony, and down into the
thick, fluffy layer of snow.
Let us count the things that could
go wrong with this scheme:
(1) The first gunshot might have attracted attention faster
than expected. She could have been discovered running
across the hall with a gun in her hand. Someone might
have checked on her room while she was in the middle of
her preparations. Remember, she's got to tie the gun to
the rope, get the rock out the window and over the
balcony, run back over to the mirror by her dressing
table, reach around behind her and pick a good angle
to be convincing without killing herself... "This? Oh,
I'm just using it to scratch my back. No, I don't know
where it came from. Oh, it's a gun? Eeek!"
(2) She might have wounded herself worse than she intended
(e.g. break a rib that then punctured a lung).
(3) She might have been left for dead for long enough to
actually bleed to death.
(4) The gun might have gotten stuck somewhere, e.g.
hooked on the windowsill (perhaps in the corner of
the window?). Remember it also has to make it over
the balcony, once it makes it through the window.
(5) The gun might have left a trace:
(a) by scraping the paint on the window frame.
(b) by flipping the wrong way and breaking the window.
(c) by being dragged through the snow on the balcony,
or on the parapet.
(d) in the surface of the snow below the balcony.
(6) The woman might have been incapacitated for longer
than expected: if the snow had a few days to melt
the gun/rope/rock assembly would be discovered.
(7) The police might have done some police work, and looked
around outside the house a little bit. The
gun/rock/rope assembly would be in a perfect position
for someone to literally trip over it while walking
around the house.
(8) Someone might have wondered why you would leave a window
open in the middle of a bitterly cold winter (think
about this: "light fluffy snow" == "really cold out
there", yes? Then think about "really cold" && "on the East
River". How much fresh air can you need?).
What a scheme, eh? What a brilliant criminal mind, eh? No
wonder it took them four plus rounds of killings to track
down this crafty devil.
===
"The Greene Murder Case" contains
a long speech by "Philo Vance"
discoursing on the difference COMPOSITION_UNITY_AND_CLUELESSNESS
between photography and painting.
He makes the point that in a good painting
everything is arranged by the artist,
and claims that a photo is merely an
unordered recording of experience.
First thought: this man had (Weirdly enough, van Dine
*no* understanding of photography. had some background as an
art critic.)
Second thought: Pollack and Rauschenberg
probably should have planted a generator
in the guy's coffin. KNOW_WHAT_I_LIKE
This discourse by Vance leads up
to the suggestion that they need
to consider the murders as a
painting, i.e. as a composition.
Third thought: this is an awfully
circuitous method of explaining that
the murderer may have planted some
misleading evidence.
When we finally get down to the
explanation of the murder, the
various insane features of the
situation are footnoted with
references to criminological
literature to establish that
each absurdity has precedent.
The trouble is that while one extreme
detail might be believed, a mass of extreme
details pushes way beyond "improbable".
All of these little outre
happenings, however "real" they
might have once been, do *not*
add up to a coherent story...
S.S. van Dine does not seem to have
made an attempt at applying his
theory of art to his own writing.
--------
[NEXT - GREENE_MURDER_FILM]