Rex says he heard a noise in the hall and the sound of a door closing twenty minutes before the shot was fired.
Ada, when told of Rex’s story, recalls also having heard a door close at some time after eleven.
It is obvious that Ada knows or suspects something.
The cook becomes emotional at the thought of anyone wanting to harm Ada, but says she can understand a person having a reason to shoot Julia and Chester.
Rex, when interviewed, shows clearly that he thinks someone in the house is guilty.
Rex accuses Von Blon of being the murderer.
Mrs. Greene makes a request that the investigation be dropped.
Third Crime
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Rex is shot in the forehead with a .32 revolver, at 11:20 a.m., twenty days after Chester has been killed and within five minutes of the time Ada phones him from the District Attorney’s office.
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There is no look of horror or surprise on Rex’s face, as was the case with Julia and Chester.
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His body is found on the floor before the mantel.
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A diagram which Ada asked him to bring with him to the District Attorney’s office has disappeared.
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No one upstairs hears the shot, though the doors are open; but Sproot, downstairs in the butler’s pantry, hears it distinctly.
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Von Blon is visiting Sibella that morning; but she says she was in the bathroom bathing her dog at the time Rex was shot.
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Footprints are found in Ada’s room coming from the balcony door, which is ajar.
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A single set of footprints is found leading from the front walk to the balcony.
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The tracks could have been made at any time after nine o’clock that morning.
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Sibella refuses to go away on a visit.
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The galoshes that made all three sets of footprints are found in the linen-closet, although they were not there when the house was searched for the revolver.
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The galoshes are returned to the linen-closet, but disappear that night.
Fourth Crime
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Two days after Rex’s death Ada and Mrs. Greene are poisoned within twelve hours of each other—Ada with morphine, Mrs. Greene with strychnine.
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Ada is treated at once, and recovers.
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Von Blon is seen leaving the house just before Ada swallows the poison.
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Ada is discovered by Sproot as a result of Sibella’s dog catching his teeth in the bell-cord.
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The morphine was taken in the bouillon which Ada habitually drank in the mornings.
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Ada states that no one visited her in her room after the nurse had called her to come and drink the bouillon; but that she went to Julia’s room to get a shawl, leaving the bouillon unguarded for several moments.
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Neither Ada nor the nurse remembers having seen Sibella’s dog in the hall before the poisoned bouillon was taken.
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Mrs. Greene is found dead of strychnine-poisoning the morning after Ada swallowed the morphine.
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The strychnine could have been administered only after 11 p.m. the previous night.
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The nurse was in her room on the third floor between 11 and 11:30 p.m.
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Von Blon was calling on Sibella that night, but Sibella says he left her at 10:45.
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The strychnine was administered in a dose of citrocarbonate, which, presumably, Mrs. Greene would not have taken without assistance.
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Sibella decides to visit a girl chum in Atlantic City, and leaves New York on the afternoon train.
Distributable Facts
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The same revolver is used on Julia, Ada, Chester, and Rex.
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All three sets of footprints have obviously been made by someone in the house for the purpose of casting suspicion on an outsider.
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The murderer is someone whom both Julia and Chester would receive in their rooms, in negligé, late at night.
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The murderer does not make himself known to Ada, but enters her room surreptitiously.
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Nearly three weeks after Chester’s death Ada comes to the District Attorney’s office, stating she has important news to impart.
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Ada says that Rex has confessed to her that he heard the shot in her room and also heard other things, but was afraid to admit them; and she asks that Rex be questioned.
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Ada tells of having found a cryptic diagram, marked with symbols, in the lower hall near the library door.
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On the day of Rex’s murder Von Blon reports that his medicine-case has been rifled of three grains of strychnine and six grains of morphine—presumably at the Greene mansion.
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The library reveals the fact that someone has been in the habit of going there and reading by candlelight. The books that show signs of having been read are: a handbook of the criminal sciences, two works on toxicology, and two treatises on hysterical paralysis and sleepwalking.
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The visitor to the library is someone who understands German well, for three of the books that have been read are in German.
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The galoshes that disappeared from the linen-closet on the night of Rex’s murder are found in the library.
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Someone listens at the door while the library is being inspected.
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Ada reports that she saw Mrs. Greene walking in the lower hall the night before.
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Von Blon asserts that Mrs. Greene’s paralysis is of a nature that makes movement a physical impossibility.
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Arrangements are made with Von Blon to have Doctor Oppenheimer examine Mrs. Greene.
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Von Blon informs Mrs. Greene of the proposed examination, which he has scheduled for the following day.
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Mrs. Greene is poisoned before Doctor Oppenheimer’s examination can be made.
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The post mortem reveals conclusively that Mrs. Greene’s leg muscles were so atrophied that she could not have walked.
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Ada, when told of the autopsy, insists that she saw her mother’s shawl about the figure in the hall, and, on being pressed, admits that Sibella sometimes wore it.
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During the questioning of Ada regarding the shawl Mrs. Mannheim suggests that it was she herself whom Ada saw in the hall.
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When Julia and Ada were shot there were, or could have been, present in the house: Chester, Sibella, Rex, Mrs. Greene, Von Blon, Barton, Hemming, Sproot, and Mrs. Mannheim.
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When Chester was shot there were, or could have been, present in the house: Sibella, Rex, Mrs. Greene, Ada, Von Blon, Barton, Hemming, Sproot, and
