S. S. Van Dine / Стивен Ван Дайн
The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке
First appearances deceive many: the intelligence alone perceives what has been carefully hidden in the recesses of the mind.
Phaedrus.
© КАРО, 2023
Все права защищены
Introductory
For many years I was the personal attorney and constant companion of Mr. Philo Vance; and this period covered the four years during which Mr. John F.-X. Markham, Vances closest friend, was District Attorney of New York. As a result it was my privilege to be a spectator of what I believe was the most amazing series of criminal cases that ever passed before the eyes of a young lawyer. Indeed, the grim dramas I witnessed during that period constitute one of the most astonishing secret documents in American police history.
Of these dramas Vance was the central character. By an analytical and interpretative process which, as far as I know, has never before been applied to criminal activities, he succeeded in solving many of the important crimes on which both the police and the District Attorneys office had hopelessly fallen down.
Due to my peculiar relations with Vance it happened that not only did I participate in all the cases with which he was connected, but I was also present at most of the informal discussions concerning them which took place between him and the District Attorney; and, being of methodical temperament, I kept a complete record of them. It is fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and transcription, for now that circumstances have rendered possible my making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and with all their various sidelights and succeeding steps.
In another volumeThe Benson Murder CaseI have related how Vance happened to become involved in criminal investigation, and have also set forth the unique analytic methods of crime detection by which he solved the problem of Alvin Bensons mysterious murder.
The present chronicle has to do with Vances solution of the brutal murder of Margaret Odella cause célèbre[1] which came to be known as the Canary murder. The strangeness, the daring, the seeming impenetrability of the crime marked it as one of the most singular and astonishing cases in New Yorks police annals; and had it not been for Philo Vances participation in its solution, I firmly believe it would have remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country.
S. S. Van Dine.
New York.
Characters Of The Book
Philo Vance
John F.-X. Makkham District Attorney of New York County.
Margaret Odell (The Canary) Famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl, who was mysteriously murdered in her apartment.
Amy Gibson Margaret Odells maid.
Charles Cleaver A man-about-town.
Kenneth Spotswoode A manufacturer.
Louis Mannix An importer.
Dr. Ambroise Lindquist A fashionable neurologist.
Tony Skeel A professional burglar.
William Elmer Jessup Telephone operator.
Harry Spively Telephone operator.
Alys La Fosse A musical-comedy actress.
Wiley Allen A gambler.
Potts A street-cleaner.
Amos Feathergill Assistant District Attorney.
William M. Moran Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.
Ernest Heath Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Guilfoyle Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Tracy Detective assigned to District Attorneys office.
Deputy-Inspector Conrad Brenner Burglar-tools expert.
Captain Dubois Finger-print expert.
Detective Bellamy Finger-print expert.
Peter Quackenbush Official photographer.
Dr. Doremus Medical Examiner.
Swacker Secretary to the District Attorney.
Currie Vances valet.
Chapter I. The Canary
In the offices of the Homicide Bureau of the Detective Division of the New York Police Department, on the third floor of the Police Headquarters building in Center Street, there is a large steel filing cabinet; and within it, among thousands of others of its kind, there reposes a small green index-card on which is typed: ODELL, MARGARET. 184 West 71st Street. Sept. 10. Murder: Strangled about 11 p.m. Apartment ransacked. Jewelry stolen. Body found by Amy Gibson, maid.
Here, in a few commonplace words, is the bleak, unadorned statement of one of the most astonishing crimes in the police annals of this countrya crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, so unique, that for many days the best minds of the Police Department and the District Attorneys office were completely at a loss as to even a method of approach. Each line of investigation only tended to prove that Margaret Odell could not possibly have been murdered. And yet, huddled on the great silken davenport in her living-room lay the girls strangled body, giving the lie to so grotesque a conclusion.
The true story of this crime, as it eventually came to light after a disheartening period of utter darkness and confusion, revealed many strange and bizarre ramifications, many dark recesses of mans unexplored nature, and the uncanny subtlety of a human mind sharpened by desperate and tragic despair. And it also revealed a hidden page of passional melodrama which, in its essence and organisms, was no less romantic and fascinating than that vivid, theatrical section of the Comédie Humaine[2] which deals with the fabulous love of Baron Nucingen for Esther van Gobseck, and with the unhappy Torpilles tragic death.
Margaret Odell was a product of the bohemian demi-monde[3] of Broadwaya scintillant figure who seemed somehow to typify the gaudy and spurious romance of transient gaiety. For nearly two years before her death she had been the most conspicuous and, in a sense, popular figure of the citys night life. In our grandparents day she might have had conferred upon her that somewhat questionable designation, the toast of the town; but to-day there are too many aspirants for this classification, too many cliques and violent schisms in the Lepidoptera of our café life, to permit of any one competitor being thus singled out. But, for all the darlings of both professional and lay press-agents, Margaret Odell was a character of unquestioned fame in her little world.
Her notoriety was due in part to certain legendary tales of her affairs with one or two obscure potentates in the backwashes of Europe. She had spent two years abroad after her first success in The Bretonne Maida popular musical comedy in which she had been mysteriously raised from obscurity to the rank of starand, one may cynically imagine, her press-agent took full advantage of her absence to circulate vermilion tales of her conquests.
Her appearance went far toward sustaining her somewhat equivocal fame. There was no question that she was beautiful in a hard, slightly flamboyant way. I remember seeing her dancing one night at the Antlers Cluba famous rendezvous for post-midnight pleasure-seekers, run by the notorious Red Raegan.[4] She impressed me then as a girl of uncommon loveliness, despite the calculating, predatory cast of her features. She was of medium height, slender, graceful in a leonine way, and, I thought, a trifle aloof and even haughty in mannera result, perhaps, of her reputed association with European royalty. She had the traditional courtesans full, red lips, and the wide, mongoose eyes of Rossettis Blessed Damozel. There was in her face that strange combination of sensual promise and spiritual renunciation with which the painters of all ages have sought to endow their conceptions of the Eternal Magdalene. Hers was the type of face, voluptuous and with a hint of mystery, which rules mans emotions and, by subjugating his mind, drives him to desperate deeds.