Стивен Ван Дайн – The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 2)

This man was a young social aristocrat, whom, for purposes of anonymity, I have chosen to call Philo Vance.

Vance had many amazing gifts and capabilities. He was an art collector in a small way, a fine amateur pianist, and a profound student of aesthetics and psychology. Although an American, he had largely been educated in Europe, and still retained a slight English accent and intonation. He had a liberal independent income, and spent considerable time fulfilling the social obligations which devolved on him as a result of family connections; but he was neither an idler nor a dilettante. His manner was cynical and aloof; and those who met him only casually, set him down as a snob. But knowing Vance, as I did, intimately, I was able to glimpse the real man beneath the surface indications; and I knew that his cynicism and aloofness, far from being a pose, sprang instinctively from a nature which was at once sensitive and solitary.

Vance was not yet thirty-five, and, in a cold, sculptural fashion, was impressively good-looking. His face was slender and mobile; but there was a stern, sardonic expression to his features, which acted as a barrier between him and his fellows. He was not emotionless, but his emotions were, in the main, intellectual. He was often criticised for his asceticism, yet I have seen him exhibit rare bursts of enthusiasm over an aesthetic or psychological problem. However, he gave the impression of remaining remote from all mundane matters; and, in truth, he looked upon life like a dispassionate and impersonal spectator at a play, secretly amused and debonairly cynical at the meaningless futility of it all. Withal, he had a mind avid for knowledge, and few details of the human comedy that came within his sphere of vision escaped him.

It was as a direct result of this intellectual inquisitiveness that he became actively, though unofficially, interested in Markham’s criminal investigations.

I kept a fairly complete record of the cases in which Vance participated as a kind of amicus curiae[8], little thinking that I would ever be privileged to make them public; but Markham, after being defeated, as you remember, on a hopelessly split ticket at the next election, withdrew from politics; and last year Vance went abroad to live, declaring he would never return to America. As a result, I obtained permission from both of them to publish my notes in full. Vance stipulated only that I should not reveal his name; but otherwise no restrictions were placed upon me.

I have related elsewhere[9] the peculiar circumstances which led to Vance’s participation in criminal research, and how, in the face of almost insuperable contradictory evidence, he solved the mysterious shooting of Alvin Benson. The present chronicle deals with his solution of Margaret Odell’s murder, which took place in the early fall of the same year, and which, you will recall, created an even greater sensation than its predecessor.[10]

A curious set of circumstances was accountable for the way in which Vance was shouldered with this new investigation. Markham for weeks had been badgered by the anti-administration newspapers for the signal failures of his office in obtaining convictions against certain underworld offenders whom the police had turned over to him for prosecution. As a result of prohibition a new and dangerous, and wholly undesirable, kind of night life had sprung up in New York. A large number of well-financed cabarets, calling themselves night clubs, had made their appearance along Broadway and in its side streets; and already there had been an appalling number of serious crimes, both passional and monetary, which, it was said, had had their inception in these unsavory resorts.

At last, when a case of murder accompanying a hold-up and jewel robbery in one of the family hotels up-town was traced directly to plans and reparations made in one of the night clubs, and when two detectives of the Homicide Bureau investigating the case were found dead one morning in the neighborhood of the club, with bullet wounds in their backs, Markham decided to pigeonhole the other affairs of his office and take a hand personally in the intolerable criminal conditions that had arisen.[11]

Chapter II. Footprints in the Snow

On the day following his decision, Markham and Vance and I were sitting in a secluded corner of the lounge-room of the Stuyvesant Club. We often came together there, for we were all members of the club, and Markham frequently used it as a kind of unofficial up-town headquarters.[12]

“It’s bad enough to have half the people in this city under the impression that the District Attorney’s office is a kind of high-class collection agency,” he remarked that night, “without being necessitated to turn detective because I’m not given sufficient evidence, or the right kind of evidence, with which to secure convictions.”

Vance looked up with a slow smile, and regarded him quizzically.

“The difficulty would seem to be,” he returned, with an indolent drawl, “that the police, being unversed in the exquisite abracadabra of legal procedure, labor under the notion that evidence which would convince a man of ordin’ry intelligence, would also convince a court of law. A silly notion, don’t y’ know. Lawyers don’t really want evidence: they want erudite technicalities. And the average policeman’s brain is too forthright to cope with the pedantic demands of jurisprudence.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” Markham retorted, with an attempt at good nature, although the strain of the past few weeks had tended to upset his habitual equanimity. “If there weren’t rules of evidence, grave injustice would too often be done innocent persons. And even a criminal is entitled to protection in our courts.”

Vance yawned mildly.

“Markham, you should have been a pedagogue. It’s positively amazin’ how you’ve mastered all the standard oratorical replies to criticism. And yet, I’m unconvinced. You remember the Wisconsin case of the kidnapped man whom the courts declared presumably dead. Even when he reappeared, hale and hearty, among his former neighbors, his status of being presumably dead was not legally altered. The visible and demonstrable fact that he was actually alive was regarded by the court as an immaterial and impertinent side-issue.[13] … Then there’s the touchin’ situation—so prevalent in this fair country—of a man being insane in one State and sane in another. … Really, y’ know, you can’t expect a mere lay intelligence, unskilled in the benign processes of legal logic, to perceive such subtle nuances. Your layman, swaddled in the darkness of ordin’ry common sense, would say that a person who is a lunatic on one bank of a river would still be a lunatic if he was on the opposite bank. And he’d also hold—erroneously, no doubt—that if a man was living, he would presumably be alive.”

“Why this academic dissertation?” asked Markham, this time a bit irritably.

“It seems to touch rather vitally on the source of your present predicament,” Vance explained equably. “The police, not being lawyers, have apparently got you into hot water, what? … Why not start an agitation to send all detectives to law school?”

“You’re a great help,” retorted Markham.

Vance raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Why disparage my suggestion? Surely you must perceive that it has merit. A man without legal training, when he knows a thing to be true, ignores all incompetent testimony to the contr’ry, and clings to the facts. A court of law listens solemnly to a mass of worthless testimony, and renders a decision not on the facts but according to a complicated set of rules. The result, d’ ye see, is that a court often acquits a prisoner, realizing full well that he is guilty. Many a judge has said, in effect, to a culprit: ‘I know, and the jury knows, that you committed the crime, but in view of the legally admissible evidence, I declare you innocent. Go and sin again.’”

Markham grunted. “I’d hardly endear myself to the people of this county if I answered the current strictures against me by recommending law courses for the Police Department.”

“Permit me, then, to suggest the alternative of Shakespeare’s butcher: ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

“Unfortunately, it’s a situation, not a utopian theory, that has to be met.”

“And just how,” asked Vance lazily, “do you propose to reconcile the sensible conclusions of the police with what you touchingly call correctness of legal procedure?”

“To begin with,” Markham informed him, “I’ve decided henceforth to do my own investigating of all important night-club criminal cases. I called a conference of the heads of my departments yesterday, and from now on there’s going to be some real activity radiating direct from my office. I intend to produce the kind of evidence I need for convictions.”

Vance slowly took a cigarette from his case and tapped it on the arm of his chair.

“Ah! So you are going to substitute the conviction of the innocent for the acquittal of the guilty?”

Markham was nettled; turning in his chair he frowned at Vance.