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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
his day... one of these novels
was made into a film with William (The Kennel Club Murders
Powell as Vance. or somesuch.)
He was one the old guard doing
drawing room murders while
Hammett and the Black Mask crew
were trying to drag things down
into the hardboiled gutter.
Raymond Chandler goes on
about the general awfulness
"golden age" detective "The Simple Art of Murder"
fiction particular in regard by Raymond Chandler
to the insanely unrealistic (November 1945,
degree of stupidity evidenced The Atlantic Monthly)
by the police.
In this respect, the novel does He also comments:
not disappoint. The remarkable
stupidity of the police is in "Philo Vance --
evidence almost from the first probably the most
page... well, maybe the first asinine character in
page of the second chapter. detective fiction"
The actual first chapter is an
overgrowth 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 (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
keeps missing the main stairs which are
gaping in the middle of the hallway,
and prefers 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, we're talking about
S.S. van Dine. 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
well-kept secret, and you really need
to look for it). I've never seen a
"mansion" like this there, but this was
in the 1920s. Things change (they
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 in the middle on " Stairs |||||||||||| |
the river side -- the killer " ---> |||||||||||| |
obviously still has the gun | -----------| |
after 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 It may shock you to hear
gun, before they really that this locked library
search the place... and was actually used by the
the locked library gets murderer to hide stuff.
left until 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: a guy looks
like he's been murdered on this bridge,
but Holmes spots a little nick in the
stone parapet of the bridge, and realizes
that he's committed suicide. He had a
rock tied to the gun, tossed the rock over
the edge and then shot himself, letting
the weight pull the gun over the edge and
into the drink.
The variation in use here: 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
*no* understanding of photography.
Second thought: Pollack and Rauschenberg
probably should have planted a generator KNOW_WHAT_I_LIKE
in the guy's coffin.
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 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.
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