The Greene murder case

by S. S. Van Dine

He took up Volume I of the “Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter,” which lay on the table beside him, and opened it at a marked page.

“Listen to this, Sergeant. I’ll translate the passage roughly as I read: ‘It is not uncommon to find people who inflict wounds on themselves; such are, besides persons pretending to be the victims of assaults with deadly weapons, those who try to extort damages or blackmail. Thus it often happens that, after an insignificant scuffle, one of the combatants shows wounds which he pretends to have received. It is characteristic of these voluntary mutilations that most frequently those who perform them do not quite complete the operation, and that they are for the most part people who manifest excessive piety, or lead a solitary life.’[³³] . . . And surely, Sergeant, you are familiar with the self-mutilation of soldiers to escape service. The most common method used by them is to place their hand over the muzzle of the gun and blow their fingers off.”

Vance closed the book.

“And don’t forget that the girl was hopeless, desperate, and unhappy, with everything to win and nothing to lose. She would probably have committed suicide if she had not worked out the plan of the murders. A superficial wound in the shoulder meant little to her in view of what she was to gain by it. And women have an almost infinite capacity for self-immolation. With Ada, it was part of her abnormal condition.—No, Sergeant; the self-shooting was perfectly consistent in the circumstances. . . .”

“But in the back!” Heath looked dumbfounded. “That’s what gets me. Whoever heard——?”

“Just a moment.” Vance took up Volume II of the “Handbuch” and opened it to a marked page. “Gross, for instance, has heard of many such cases—in fact, they’re quite common on the Continent. And his record of them indubitably gave Ada the idea for shooting herself in the back. Here’s a single paragraph culled from many pages of similar cases: ‘That you should not be deceived by the seat of the wound is proved by the following two cases. In the Vienna Prater a man killed himself in the presence of several people by shooting himself in the back of the head with a revolver. Without the testimony of several witnesses nobody would have accepted the theory of suicide. A soldier killed himself by a shot with his military rifle through the back, by fixing the rifle in a certain position and then lying down over it. Here again the position of the wound seemed to exclude the theory of suicide.’ ”[³⁴]

“Wait a minute!” Heath heaved himself forward and shook his cigar at Vance. “What about the gun? Sproot entered Ada’s room right after the shot was fired, and there wasn’t no sign of a gun!”

Vance, without answering, merely turned the pages of Gross’s “Handbuch” to where another marker protruded, and began translating:

“ ‘Early one morning the authorities were informed that the corpse of a murdered man had been found. At the spot indicated the body was discovered of a grain merchant, A. M., supposed to be a well-to-do 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.