The Greene Murder Case

epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs. Greene, and found it that night. The nurse went to the third floor to prepare for bed between eleven and eleven-thirty; and during that half-hour Ada visited her mother’s room. Whether she suggested the citrocarbonate or Mrs. Greene herself asked for it, we’ll never know. Probably the former, for Ada had always given it to her at night. When the nurse came downstairs again Ada was already back in bed, apparently asleep, and Mrs. Greene was on the verge of her first⁠—and, let us hope, her only⁠—convulsion.”

“Doremus’s postmortem report must have given her a terrific shock,” commented Markham.

“It did. It upset all her calculations. Imagine her feelings when we informed her that Mrs. Greene couldn’t have walked! She backed out of the danger nicely, though. The detail of the Oriental shawl, however, nearly entangled her. But even that point she turned to her own advantage by using it as a clue against Sibella.”

“How do you account for Mrs. Mannheim’s actions during that interview?” asked Markham. “You remember her saying it might have been she whom Ada saw in the hall.”

A cloud came over Vance’s face.

“I think,” he said sadly, “that Frau Mannheim began to suspect her little Ada at that point. She knew the terrible history of the girl’s father, and perhaps had lived in fear of some criminal outcropping in the child.”

There was a silence for several moments. Each of us was busy with his own thoughts. Then Vance continued:

“After Mrs. Greene’s death, only Sibella stood between Ada and her blazing goal; and it was Sibella herself who gave her the idea for a supposedly safe way to commit the final murder. Weeks ago, on a ride Van and I took with the two girls and Von Blon, Sibella’s venomous pique led her to make a foolish remark about running one’s victim over a precipice in a machine; and it no doubt appealed to Ada’s sense of the fitness of things that Sibella should thus suggest the means of her own demise. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ada intended, after having killed her sister, to say that Sibella had tried to murder her, but that she had suspected the other’s purpose and jumped from the car in time to save herself; and that Sibella had miscalculated the car’s speed and been carried over the precipice. The fact that Von Blon and Van and I had heard Sibella speculate on just such a method of murder would have given weight to Ada’s story. And what a neat ending it would have made⁠—Sibella, the murderer, dead; the case closed; Ada, the inheritor of the Greene millions, free to do as she chose! And⁠—’pon my soul, Markham!⁠—it came very near succeeding.”

Vance sighed, and reached for the decanter. After refilling our glasses he settled back and smoked moodily.

“I wonder how long this terrible plot had been in preparation. We’ll never know. Maybe years. There was no haste in Ada’s preparations. Everything was worked out carefully; and she let circumstances⁠—or, rather, opportunity⁠—guide her. Once she had secured the revolver, it was only a question of waiting for a chance when she could make the footprints and be sure the gun would sink out of sight in the snowdrift on the balcony steps. Yes, the most essential condition of her scheme was the snow.⁠ ⁠… Amazin’!”

---

There is little more to add to this record. The truth was not given out, and the case was “shelved.” The following year Tobias’s will was upset by the Supreme Court in Equity⁠—that is, the twenty-five-year domiciliary clause was abrogated in view of all that had happened at the house; and Sibella came into the entire Greene fortune. How much Markham had to do with the decision, through his influence with the Administration judge who rendered it, I don’t know; and naturally I have never asked. But the old Greene mansion was, as you remember, torn down shortly afterward, and the estate sold to a realty corporation.

Mrs. Mannheim, brokenhearted over Ada’s death, claimed her inheritance⁠—which Sibella generously doubled⁠—and returned to Germany to seek what comfort she might among the nieces and nephews with whom, according to Chester, she was constantly corresponding. Sproot went back to England. He told Vance before departing that he had long planned a cottage retreat in Surrey where he could loaf and invite his soul. I picture him now, sitting on an ivied porch overlooking the Downs, reading his beloved Martial.

Doctor and Mrs. Von Blon, immediately after the court’s decision relating to the will, sailed for the Riviera and spent a belated honeymoon there. They are now settled in Vienna, where the doctor has become a Privatdocent at the University⁠—his father’s Alma Mater. He is, I understand, making quite a name for himself in the field of neurology.

Endnotes

1. It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to state that I have received official permission for my task. ↩

2. The Benson Murder Case (Scribners, 1926). ↩

3. The “Canary” Murder Case (Scribners, 1927). ↩

4. This was subsequently proved correct. Nearly a year later Maleppo was arrested in Detroit, extradited to New York, and convicted of the murder. His two companions had already been successfully prosecuted for robbery. They are now serving long terms in Sing Sing. ↩

5. Amos Feathergill was then an Assistant District Attorney. He later ran on the Tammany ticket for assemblyman, and was elected. ↩

6. It was Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, who had been in charge of both the Benson and the Canary cases; and, although he had been openly antagonistic to Vance during the first of these investigations, a curious good-fellowship had later grown up between them. Vance admired the Sergeant’s dogged and straightforward qualities; and Heath had developed a keen respect⁠—with certain reservations, however⁠—for Vance’s abilities. ↩

7. Vance, after reading proof of this sentence, requested me to make mention here of that beautiful volume,