The Canary Murder Case quotes

… 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.

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.”

The idea is too melodramatic. It smacks too much of the gaudy journalistic imagination: it’s too Eugène Sue-ish. Crime isn’t a mass instinct except during wartime, and then it’s merely an obscene sport.

Crime, d’ ye see, is a personal and individual business. One doesn’t make up a partie carrée for a murder as one does for a bridge game.

… Markham, old dear, don’t let this romantic criminological idea lead you astray. And don’t scrutinize the figurative footprints in the snow too closely. They’ll confuse you most horribly—you’re far too trustin’ and literal for this wicked world.

… Markham, old dear, don’t let this romantic criminological idea lead you astray. And don’t scrutinize the figurative footprints in the snow too closely. They’ll confuse you most horribly—you’re far too trustin’ and literal for this wicked world.

I warn you that no clever criminal is going to leave his own footprints for your tape-measure and calipers.

”

“Tut, tut!” Vance chided him. “

There should be no such word as ‘never’ in the bright lexicon of detecting.

”

I grant you it is correct and typical in every detail. But just there is where it fails, don’t y’ know. Its technic is too good, its craftsmanship too perfect. The ensemble, as it were, is not convincing—it lacks ‘élan.’

Aesthetically speaking, it has all the earmarks of a tour de force. Vulgarly speaking, it’s a fake.

” He paused and gave Markham an engaging smile. “I trust this somewhat oracular peroration has not bored you.”

It is almost mathematically perfect. And therein, d’ ye see, lies the irresistible inference of its having been carefully premeditated and planned. To use an art term, it is a tickled-up crime. Therefore, its conception was not spontaneous. … And yet, don’t y’ know,

I can’t point out any specific flaw; for its great flaw lies in its being flawless. And nothing flawless, my dear fellow, is natural or genuine.

”

“

There’s something positively pathetic about the childlike faith of the legal mind.

”

“My dear fellow!” Vance rebuked him. “The presumption implied in that remark is most immodest.

If you could distinguish between rationality and irrationality you wouldn’t be a lawyer⁠—you’d be a god.

… No; you’re going at this thing the wrong way. The real factors in the case are not what you call the known circumstances, but the unknown quantities—the human x’s, so to speak—the personalities, or natures, of your quartet.”

“So I would,” admitted Vance apathetically. “And—d’ye know?—I rather fancy that’s just the kind of schemes a lawbreaker would concoct, if he was planning a murder, and his own life was at stake.

What really amazes me is the naive assumption of you investigators that a murderer gives no intelligent thought whatever to his future safety.

It’s rather touchin’, y’ know.”

I shall ignore both Heath and Markham, and become as a pelican of the wilderness, an owl of the desert, a sparrow alone upon the housetop. …

Really, y’ know, I’m no avenger of society, but I do detest an unsolved problem.

”

“Van,” he said to me, when Currie had brought us our second cup of coffee, “however secretive a woman may be, there’s always someone to whom she unburdens her soul.

A confidant is an essential to the feminine temperament.

It may be a mother, or a lover, or a priest, or a doctor, or, more generally, a girl chum. In the Canary’s case we haven’t a mother or a priest. Her lover—the elegant Skeel—was a potential enemy;

That fish-eyed gambler has unsuspected potentialities for evil. But with the theory itself I am wholly in accord. And behold, my dear Markham: you yourself apply psychology in its abecedarian implications, yet ridicule my application of it in its higher developments.

Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, y’ know, but it’s none the less a priceless jewel.

… How about a cup of tea?”

“The primitive Alys rather appeals to me,” he said. “She’s much too good for the oleaginous Mannix. …

Women are so shrewd⁠—and so gullible.

A woman can read a man with almost magical insight; but, on the other hand, she is inexpressibly blind when it comes to her man. Witness sweet Alys’s faith in Mannix. He probably told her he was slaving at the office Monday night.

“Yes, yes. Fingerprints—chisel marks. You’re such a trustin’ soul, Markham. Skeel’s fingerprints are found in the apartment; therefore, Skeel strangled the lady. So beastly simple. Why bother further? A chose jugée—an adjudicated case. Send Skeel to the chair, and that’s that! …

It’s effective, y’ know, but is it art?

”

“Oh, I’ll grant that your case against him is ingenious. It’s so deuced ingenious I just haven’t the heart to reject it.

But most popular truth is mere ingenuity⁠—that’s why it’s so wrongheaded.

Your theory would appeal strongly to the popular mind. And yet, y’ know, Markham, it isn’t true.”

“ ’Pon my soul!” Vance stared at him in satirical wonderment. “You’re becoming downright romantic! Secret passageways—hidden doors—stairways between the walls. So that’s it, is it? Oh, my word! …

Sergeant, beware of the cinema. It has ruined many a good man. Try grand opera for a while⁠—it’s more borin’ but less corruptin’.

”

“Oh, that?” Vance shrugged. “A point in substantiation.

Irreligious persons call on God much more than Christians. The only true and consistent theologians, don’t y’ know, are the atheists.

”

“

Nine-tenths of poker, Markham, is psychology; and if one understands the game, one can learn more of a man’s inner nature at a poker table in an hour than during a year’s casual association with him.

You rallied me once when I said I could lead you to the perpetrator of any crime by examining the factors of the crime itself. But naturally I must know the man to whom I am to lead you;

“

Recognition of my transcendent genius, I see, is destined to be posthumous.

Omnia post obitum fingit majora vetustas. In the meantime I bear the taunts and jeers of the multitude with a stout heart. My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

“Recognition of my transcendent genius, I see, is destined to be posthumous. Omnia post obitum fingit majora vetustas. In the meantime I bear the taunts and jeers of the multitude with a stout heart.

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

”

“

Markham dear, I’m absorbing atmosphere. I’m attuning my soul to the apartment’s vibrations.

Do let me attune in peace. I may have a visitation at any moment—a revelation from Sinai, as it were.”

“That’s just it, don’t y’ know.

The contradict’ry indications are far too perfect.

They fit together too beautifully; they’re almost as fine as the forms in a Michelangelo statue. They’re too carefully coordinated, d’ ye see, to have been merely a haphazard concatenation of circumstances. They signify conscious design.”

“If I could grant your premise that Spotswoode killed the girl,” he said, “I could follow your syllogism. But

I can’t very well convict a man on the grounds that his defense is too perfect.

”

Being something of a mechanic, he arranged a mechanical alibi. The device he chose was simple and obvious enough—no tortuosities or complications. And it would have succeeded but for what the insurance companies piously call an act of God.

No one can foresee accidents, Markham: they wouldn’t be accidental if one could.

But Spotswoode certainly took every precaution that was humanly possible. It never occurred to him that you would thwart his every effort to return here and confiscate the record;

“

Don’t be so confoundedly moral, old thing. Everyone’s a murderer at heart.

The person who has never felt a passionate hankering to kill someone is without emotions. And do you think it’s ethics or theology that stays the average person from homicide? Dear no!

“Don’t be so confoundedly moral, old thing. Everyone’s a murderer at heart. The person who has never felt a passionate hankering to kill someone is without emotions. And do you think it’s ethics or theology that stays the average person from homicide? Dear no!

It’s lack of courage⁠—the fear of being found out, or haunted, or cursed with remorse.

Observe with what delight the people en masse—to wit, the state—put men to death, and then gloat over it in the newspapers. Nations declare war against one another on the slightest provocation, so they can, with immunity, vent their lust for slaughter.

“Don’t be so confoundedly moral, old thing. Everyone’s a murderer at heart.

The person who has never felt a passionate hankering to kill someone is without emotions.

And do you think it’s ethics or theology that stays the average person from homicide? Dear no! It’s lack of courage—the fear of being found out, or haunted, or cursed with remorse.