The Greene Murder Case quotes

Though dissimilar in tastes and even in ethical outlook, they nevertheless respected each other profoundly. I have often marvelled at the friendship of these two antipodal men; but as the years went by I came more and more to understand it.

It was as if they were drawn together by those very qualities which each realized⁠—perhaps with a certain repressed regret⁠—were lacking in his own nature.

Markham was forthright, brusque, and, on occasion, domineering, taking life with grim and serious concern, and following the dictates of his legal conscience in the face of every obstacle: honest, incorruptible, and untiring.

“You did treat him a bit cavalierly.

Sarcasm is not exactly a means of endearment.

”

“Alas, Sergeant, I’ve been immersed in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Renaissance façades, and other such trivialities, since I saw you last. But I’m happy to note that crime is picking up again.

It’s a deuced drab world without a nice murky murder now and then, don’t y’ know.

”

As we entered the grounds that gray November afternoon an atmosphere of foreboding bleakness seemed to have settled over the estate. The trees and shrubs were all bare, except the evergreens, which were laden with patches of snow.

The trellises stood stripped along the walls, like clinging black skeletons; and, save for the front walk, which had been hastily and imperfectly swept, the grounds were piled high with irregular snowdrifts.

The gray of the mansion’s masonry was almost the color of the brooding overcast sky;

Sibella looked at him reproachfully. “You know, Mr. Markham, you sound exactly like the Mother Superior of the stuffy convent I was confined in for two years.” She became suddenly grave. “

Why draw a long face over something that’s happened and can’t be helped?

Anyway, Julia never sought to brighten her little corner. She was always crabbed and faultfinding, and her good deeds wouldn’t fill a book. It may be unsisterly to say it, but she’s not going to be missed so dreadfully.

“My dear girl!” Vance raised a protesting hand. “If I had the foggiest idea I wouldn’t be annoying you with impertinent questions.

I’m plodding with leaden feet in a veritable bog of ignorance.

”

“Another Régie, monsieur.

I was on the verge of becoming serious; and I simply mustn’t become serious. It’s so frightfully boring.

Besides, it gives one wrinkles. And I’m much too young for wrinkles.”

In fact, the Greenes are a queer collection. We don’t love one another the way a perfectly nice and proper family should. We’re always at each other’s throats, bickering and fighting about something or other. It’s rather a mess—this ménage.

It’s a wonder to me murder hasn’t been done long before.

And we’ve all got to live here until 1932, or go it on our own; and, of course, none of us could make a decent living. A sweet paternal heritage!”

Someone lay in wait—someone who knew his way about, knew where the light-switches were, knew when everyone was asleep, knew when the servants had retired—knew just when and how to strike the blow. Some deep, awful motive lies behind that crime.

There are depths beneath depths in what happened last night⁠—obscure fetid chambers of the human soul.

Black hatreds, unnatural desires, hideous impulses, obscene ambitions are at the bottom of it; and you are only playing into the murderer’s hands when you sit back and refuse to see its significance.”

“That house is polluted, Markham. It’s crumbling in decay—not material decay, perhaps, but a putrefaction far more terrible.

The very heart and essence of that old house is rotting away.

And all the inmates are rotting with it, disintegrating in spirit and mind and character. They’ve been polluted by the very atmosphere they’ve created. This crime, which you take so lightly, was inevitable in such a setting.

“That house is polluted, Markham. It’s crumbling in decay—not material decay, perhaps, but a putrefaction far more terrible. The very heart and essence of that old house is rotting away. And all the inmates are rotting with it, disintegrating in spirit and mind and character.

They’ve been polluted by the very atmosphere they’ve created.

This crime, which you take so lightly, was inevitable in such a setting. I only wonder it was not more terrible, more vile. It marked one of the tertiary stages of the general dissolution of that abnormal establishment.”

“But we know the situation, Vance,” Markham argued patiently. “I’ll admit it’s an unusual one. But it’s not necessarily criminal. Antagonistic human elements are often thrown together; and a mutual hate is generated as a result.

But mere hate is rarely a motive for murder; and it certainly does not constitute evidence of criminal activity.

”

“Zola’s Nana, to be explicit.

Mother told me I shouldn’t read it; so I got it at once.

It was frightfully disappointing, though.”

“On that point I couldn’t be altogether lucid. We Greenes don’t confide in one another. There’s a beastly spirit of distrust in this ancestral domain.

We all lie to each other on general principles.

And as for secrets! Each member of the family is a kind of Masonic Order in himself. Surely there’s some reason for all these shootings. I simply can’t imagine anyone indulging himself in this fashion for the mere purpose of pistol practice.”

“On that point I couldn’t be altogether lucid. We Greenes don’t confide in one another. There’s a beastly spirit of distrust in this ancestral domain. We all lie to each other on general principles. And as for secrets!

Each member of the family is a kind of Masonic Order in himself.

Surely there’s some reason for all these shootings. I simply can’t imagine anyone indulging himself in this fashion for the mere purpose of pistol practice.”

“

Tragedies very seldom come singly, sir, if I may be permitted to say so.

One never knows what will happen next. I try not to anticipate the workings of fate, but I strive to hold myself in readiness—”

“Perhaps none.” Vance strode back across the room, his eyes on the floor. “But, Markham old dear, nothing appears to have any connection with this debacle. And, on the other hand, everything seems to have a possible relationship.

The whole house is steeped in vague meanings. A hundred shadowy hands are pointing to the culprit, and the moment you try to determine the direction the hands disappear.

It’s a nightmare. Nothing means anything; therefore, anything may have a meaning.”

And, on the other hand, everything seems to have a possible relationship. The whole house is steeped in vague meanings. A hundred shadowy hands are pointing to the culprit, and the moment you try to determine the direction the hands disappear.

It’s a nightmare. Nothing means anything; therefore, anything may have a meaning.

”

“Sproot makes much better tea than he does coffee, thank Heaven!” she ran on, with a kind of nervous detachment. “What a sweet day we had yesterday!

Funerals are hideous farces.

I could hardly keep a straight face when the officiating reverend doctor began extolling the glories of the departed. And all the time—poor man—he was eaten up with morbid curiosity.

“This moated grange, so to speak, is getting on my young and fretful nerves. And the burden of being a celebrity is quite overwhelming. I really have become a celebrity, you know. In fact, all the Greenes are quite famous now.

I never imagined a mere murder or two could give a family such positively irrational prominence.

I’ll probably be in Hollywood yet.”

We went north on Fifth Avenue, entered Central Park, and, emerging at the 72nd Street entrance, headed for Riverside Drive.

The Hudson River lay like a sheet of bluegrass below us, and the Jersey palisades in the still clear air of early afternoon were as plainly etched as a Degas drawing.

At Dyckman Street we went up Broadway, and turned west on the Spuyten Duyvil Road to Palisade Avenue overlooking the old wooded estates along the water.

“

What a perfectly ripping spot for a murder!

” she exclaimed, leaning over and looking down the steep slope of the bluff.

“You feel that, too!” The Inspector’s voice was off its normal pitch. “

By God! This is the first case I’ve ever had that frightened me.

”

And as for dispersing the family: not only would you find old Mrs. Greene, who holds the purse-strings, an adamantine obstacle, but you’d meet all manner of legal complications as a result of Tobias’s will.

No one gets a dollar, I understand, who doesn’t remain in the mansion until the worms have ravaged his carcass for a full quarter of a century.

And even if you succeeded in scattering the remnants of the Greene line, and locked up the house, you wouldn’t have stamped out the killer. And there’ll be no end of this thing until a purifying stake has been driven through his heart.”

“A spy in the house would be useless.

Isn’t everyone there a spy now, watching all the others, and watching them with fear and suspicion?

And as for dispersing the family: not only would you find old Mrs. Greene, who holds the purse-strings, an adamantine obstacle, but you’d meet all manner of legal complications as a result of Tobias’s will.

She’s not sufficiently imaginative to have planned this accumulative massacre. But as regards the others, I could picture any one of ’em as being at the bottom of this diabolical slaughter.

It’s a mistaken idea, don’t y’ know, to imagine that a murderer looks like a murderer. No murderer ever does.

The only people who really look like murderers are quite harmless. Do you recall the mild and handsome features of the Reverend Richeson of Cambridge? Yet he gave his inamorata cyanide of potassium.

“

Nothing has ‘just happened’ in this case. There’s a terrible logic about everything⁠—a carefully planned reason behind each detail.

Nothing has been left to chance. Still, this very systematization of the crime will eventually prove the murderer’s downfall. When we can find a key to any one of the anterooms, we’ll know our way into the main chamber of horrors.”

Although it was but a little past four o’clock, the early winter twilight had already descended. Sproot had not yet lighted the lamps, and the lower hall was in semidarkness. A ghostly atmosphere pervaded the house.

Even the silence was oppressive, and seemed fraught with the spirit of commination.

We went straight to the hall table where we had thrown our coats, eager to get out into the open air.

“Moreover,” added Vance, “we’re dealing with an extr’ordin’rily clever plot—something that has been thought out and planned down to the minutest detail, and elaborately covered up at every point. Everything has been staked—even life itself—on the outcome.

Only a supreme hatred and an exalted hope could have inspired the crimes.

And against such attributes, d’ ye see, the ordin’ry means of prevention are utterly useless.”

“It wouldn’t comfort you, Sergeant,” Vance told him. “

At the end of your tête-à-tête you’d know only what the young lady wanted you to know.

”

In a photograph there are always details that have no meaning, variations of light and shade that are harmonically false, textures that create false notes, lines that are discords, masses that are out of place.

The camera, d’ ye see, is deucedly forthright⁠—it records whatever is before it, irrespective of art values.

The inevitable result is that a photograph lacks organization and unity; its composition is, at best, primitive and obvious. And it is full of irrelevant factors—of objects which have neither meaning nor purpose. There is no uniformity of conception in it.

“Not yet, perhaps,” agreed Vance. “But that’s because we haven’t gone about it systematically.

We’ve done too much investigating and too little thinking.

We’ve been sidetracked by what the modern painters call documentation—that is, by the objective appeal of the picture’s recognizable parts. We haven’t sought for the abstract content. We’ve overlooked the ‘significant form’—a loose phrase; but blame Clive Bell for it.”

“

If only life were as simple as your aesthetic theories!

”

“It’s dashed simpler,” Vance asserted. “

The mere mechanism of a camera can record life; but only a highly developed creative intelligence, with a profound philosophic insight, can produce a work of art.

”

“Yes, I know,” came the quiet answer. “That is, my brain has told me conclusively who’s at the bottom of this fiendish affair; but even now—in the daylight—I can’t credit it.

Everything in me revolts against the acceptance of the truth.

The fact is, I’m almost afraid to accept it. … Dash it all, I’m getting mellow. Middle-age has crept upon me.” He attempted to smile, but failed.

“

If society were omniscient, Markham, it would have a right to sit in judgment.

But society is ignorant and venomous, devoid of any trace of insight or understanding. It exalts knavery, and worships stupidity. It crucifies the intelligent, and puts the diseased in dungeons.

And, withal, it arrogates to itself the right and ability to analyze the subtle sources of what it calls ‘crime,’ and to condemn to death all persons whose inborn and irresistible impulses it does not like.

That’s your sweet society, Markham⁠—a pack of wolves watering at the mouth for victims on whom to vent its organized lust to kill and flay.

”

“Then you do know something!” Her voice quavered with eagerness. “Oh, how long before this awful suspense will be over?

Every night for weeks I’ve been afraid to turn out my lights and go to sleep.

”

“There’s no time now for explanations,” Vance replied brusquely. “

Either I’m on a fool’s errand, or there’s an abominable tragedy ahead of us.

” His face was set and white, and he looked anxiously at his watch. “We’re twenty minutes ahead of the usual running time from the Plaza to Yonkers. Furthermore, we’re taking the direct route to our destination—another ten minutes’ saving.