In another volume—“The Benson Murder Case”—I 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 Benson’s mysterious murder.
The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the brutal murder of Margaret Odell—a cause célèbre 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 York’s police annals; and had it not been for Philo Vance’s 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. Markham 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 Odell’s 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 Attorney’s 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 Vance’s 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 country—a crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, so unique, that for many days the best minds of the Police Department and the District Attorney’s 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 girl’s 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 man’s 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 which deals with the fabulous love of Baron Nucingen for Esther van Gobseck, and with the unhappy Torpille’s tragic death.