The Greene Murder Case

man, face downward with a gunshot wound behind the ear. The bullet, after passing through the brain, had lodged in the frontal bone above the left eye. The place where the corpse was found was in the middle of a bridge over a deep stream. Just when the inquiry was concluding and the corpse was about to be removed for the post mortem, the investigating officer observed quite by chance that on the decayed wooden parapet of the bridge, almost opposite to the spot where the corpse lay, there was a small but perfectly fresh dent which appeared to have been caused by a violent blow on the upper edge of the parapet of a hard and angular object. He immediately suspected that the dent had some connection with the murder. Accordingly he determined to drag the bed of the stream below the bridge, when almost immediately there was picked up a strong cord about fourteen feet long with a large stone at one end and at the other a discharged pistol, the barrel of which fitted exactly the bullet extracted from the head of A. M. The case was thus evidently one of suicide. A. M. had hung the stone over the parapet of the bridge and discharged the pistol behind his ear. The moment he fired he let go the pistol, which the weight of the stone dragged over the parapet into the water.’35⁠ ⁠… Does that answer your question, Sergeant?”

Heath stared at him with gaping eyes.

“You mean her gun went outa the window the same like that guy’s gun went over the bridge?”

“There can be no doubt about it. There was no other place for the gun to go. The window, I learned from Sproot, was open a foot, and Ada stood before the window when she shot herself. Returning from Julia’s room she attached a cord to the revolver with a weight of some kind on the other end, and hung the weight out of the window. When her hand released the weapon it was simply drawn over the sill and disappeared in the drift of soft snow on the balcony steps. And there is where the importance of the weather came in. Ada’s plan needed an unusual amount of snow; and the night of November 8 was ideal for her grisly purpose.”

“My God, Vance!” Markham’s tone was strained and unnatural. “This thing begins to sound more like a fantastic nightmare than a reality.”

“Not only was it a reality, Markham,” said Vance gravely, “but it was an actual duplication of reality. It had all been done before and duly recorded in Gross’s treatise, with names, dates, and details.”

“Hell! No wonder we couldn’t find the gun.” Heath spoke with awed disgust. “And what about the footprints, Mr. Vance? I suppose she faked ’em all.”

“Yes, Sergeant⁠—with Gross’s minute instructions and the footprint forgeries of many famous criminals to guide her, she faked them. As soon as it had stopped snowing that night, she slipped downstairs, put on a pair of Chester’s discarded galoshes, and walked to the front gate and back. Then she hid the galoshes in the library.”

Vance turned once more to Gross’s manual.

“There’s everything here that one could possibly want to know about the making and detection of footprints, and⁠—what is more to the point⁠—about the manufacturing of footprints in shoes too large for one’s feet.⁠—Let me translate a short passage: ‘The criminal may intend to cast suspicion upon another person, especially if he foresees that suspicion may fall upon himself. In this case he produces clear footprints which, so to speak, leap to the eyes, by wearing shoes which differ essentially from his own. One may often in this way, as has been proved by numerous experiments, produce footprints which deceive perfectly.’36⁠ ⁠… And here at the end of the paragraph Gross refers specifically to galoshes37⁠—a fact which very likely gave Ada her inspiration to use Chester’s overshoes. She was shrewd enough to profit by the suggestions in this passage.”

“And she was shrewd enough to hoodwink all of us when we questioned her,” commented Markham bitterly.

“True. But that was because she had a folie de grandeur, and lived the story. Moreover, it was all based on fact; its details were grounded in reality. Even the shuffling sound she said she heard in her room was an imaginative projection of the actual shuffling sound she made when she walked in Chester’s huge galoshes. Also, her own shuffling, no doubt, suggested to her how Mrs. Greene’s footsteps would have sounded had the old lady regained the use of her legs. And I imagine it was Ada’s original purpose to cast a certain amount of suspicion on Mrs. Greene from the very beginning. But Sibella’s attitude during that first interview caused her to change her tactics. As I see it, Sibella was suspicious of little sister, and talked the situation over with Chester, who may also have had vague misgivings about Ada. You remember his sub-rosa chat with Sibella when he went to summon her to the drawing-room. He was probably informing her that he hadn’t yet made up his mind about Ada, and was advising her to go easy until there was some specific proof. Sibella evidently agreed, and refrained from any direct charge until Ada, in telling her grotesque fairytale about the intruder, rather implied it was a woman’s hand that had touched her in the dark. That was too much for Sibella, who thought Ada was referring to her; and she burst forth with her accusation, despite its seeming absurdity. The amazing thing about it was that it happened to be the truth. She named the murderer and stated a large part of the motive before any of us remotely guessed the truth, even though she did back down and change her mind when the inconsistency of it was pointed out to her. And she really did see Ada in Chester’s room looking for the revolver.”

Markham