According to one review, Garden runs on “passion, avarice, ambition and horse-racing.” It also runs on pure 1930s octane, because this is a classic house-party murder mystery, that staple of the Golden Age. As befitting a Philo yarn, of course, it’s a very Manhattan house-party, with an actress and a socialite on hand, and a bookie on the telephone. There’s also a losing bet on the ponies, and an ensuing suicide…but Philo, natch, is not sure just who pulled the trigger. A joy, as always, for readers who delight in Philo’s spectacular brand of awfulness—is there anyone snootier? Snobbier? More taken with himself?—but also for fans of the Impossible Crime.
“Philo Vance is not quite so fond of displaying his learning as he was in the earlier stories. But otherwise he is still the same old Philo, and long may he wave.”—New York Times
CHAPTER ONE
The Trojan Horses
(Friday, April 13; 10 p. m.)
THERE WERE TWO reasons why the terrible and, in many ways, incredible Garden murder case—which took place in the early spring following the spectacular Casino murder case*—was so designated. In the first place, the scene of this tragedy was the penthouse home of Professor Ephraim Garden, the great experimental chemist of Stuyvesant University; and secondly, the exact situs criminis was the beautiful private roof-garden over the apartment itself.
It was both a peculiar and implausible affair, and one so cleverly planned that only by the merest accident—or, perhaps I should say a fortuitous intervention—was it discovered at all. Despite the fact that the circumstances preceding the crime were entirely in Philo Vance’s favor, I cannot help regarding it as one of his greatest triumphs in criminal investigation and deduction; for it was his quick uncanny judgments, his ability to read human nature, and his tremendous flair for the significant undercurrents of the so-called trivia of life, that led him to the truth.
The Garden murder case involved a curious and anomalous mixture of passion, avarice, ambition and horse-racing. There was an admixture of hate, also; but this potent and blinding element was, I imagine, an understandable outgrowth of the other factors. However, the case was amazing in its subtleties, its daring, its thought-out mechanism, and its sheer psychological excitation.
The beginning of the case came on the night of April 13. It was one of those mild evenings that we often experience in early spring following a spell of harsh dampness, when all the remaining traces of winter finally capitulate to the inevitable seasonal changes. There was a mellow softness in the air, a sudden perfume from the burgeoning life of nature—the kind of atmosphere that makes one lackadaisical and wistful; and, at the same time, stimulates one’s imagination.
I mention this seemingly irrelevant fact because I have good reason to believe these meteorological conditions had much to do with the startling events that were imminent that night and which were to break forth, in all their horror, before another twenty-four hours had passed.
And I believe that the reason, with all its subtle innuendoes, was the real explanation of the change that came over Vance himself during his investigation of the crime. Up to that time I had never considered Vance a man of any deep personal emotion, except in so far as children and animals and his intimate masculine friendships were concerned. He had always impressed me as a man so highly mentalized, so cynical and impersonal in his attitude toward life, that an irrational human weakness like romance would be alien to his nature. But in the course of his deft inquiry into the murders in Professor Garden’s penthouse, I saw, for the first time, another and softer side of his character. Vance was never a happy man in the conventional sense; but after the Garden murder case there were evidences of an even deeper loneliness in his sensitive nature.
But these sentimental side-lights perhaps do not matter in the reportorial account of the astonishing history I am here setting down, and I doubt if they should have been mentioned at all but for the fact that they gave an added inspiration and impetus to the energy Vance exerted and the risks he ran in bringing the murderer to justice.
As I have said, the case opened—so far as Vance was concerned with it—on the night of April 13. John F.-X. Markham, then District Attorney of New York County, had dined with Vance at his apartment in East 38th Street. The dinner had been excellent—as all of Vance’s dinners were—and at ten o’clock the three of us were sitting in the comfortable library, sipping Napoléon 1809—that famous and exquisite cognac brandy of the First Empire.
Vance and Markham had been discussing crime waves in a desultory manner. There had been a mild disagreement, Vance discounting the theory that crime waves are calculable, and holding that crime is entirely personal and therefore incompatible with generalizations or laws. The conversation had then drifted round to the bored young people of postwar decadence who had, for the sheer excitement of it, organized crime clubs whose members tried their hand at murders wherein nothing was to be gained materially. The Loeb-Leopold case naturally was mentioned, and also a more recent and equally vicious case that had just come to light in one of the leading western cities.
It was in the midst of this discussion that Currie, Vance’s old English butler and majordomo, appeared at the library door. I noticed that he seemed nervous and ill at ease as he waited for Vance to finish speaking; and I think Vance, too, sensed something unusual in the man’s attitude, for he stopped speaking rather abruptly and turned.
“What is it, Currie? Have you seen a ghost, or are there burglars in the house?”
“I have just had a telephone call, sir,” the old man answered, endeavoring to restrain the excitement in his voice.
“Not bad news from abroad?” Vance asked sympathetically.
“Oh, no, sir; it wasn’t anything for me. There was a gentleman on the phone—”
Vance lifted his eyebrows and smiled faintly.
“A gentleman, Currie?”
“He spoke like a gentleman, sir. He was certainly no ordinary person. He had a cultured voice, sir, and—”
“Since your instinct has gone so far,” Vance interrupted, “perhaps you can tell me the gentleman’s age?”
“I should say he was middle-aged, or perhaps a little beyond,” Currie ventured. “His voice sounded mature and dignified and judicial.”
“Excellent!” Vance crushed out his cigarette. “And what was the object of this dignified, middle-aged gentleman’s call? Did he ask to speak to me or give you his name?”
A worried look came into Currie’s eyes as he shook his head.
“No, sir. That’s the strange part of it. He said he did not wish to speak to you personally, and he would not tell me his name. But he asked me to give you a message. He was very precise about it and made me write it down word for word and then repeat it. And the moment I had done so he hung up the receiver.” Currie stepped forward. “Here’s the message, sir.” And he held out one of the small memorandum sheets Vance always kept at his telephone.
Release Date: February 21, 1936
Release Time: 61 minutes
Director: Edwin L Marin
Cast:
Edmund Lowe as Philo Vance
Virginia Bruce as Zalia Graem
Benita Hume as Nurse Gladys Beeton
Douglas Walton as Floyd Garden
Nat Pendleton as Sergeant Ernest Heath
Gene Lockhart as Edgar Lowe Hammle
H. B. Warner as Major Fenwicke-Ralston
Kent Smith as Woode Swift
Grant Mitchell as District Attorney Markham
Frieda Inescort as Mrs. Madge Fenwicke-Ralston
Henry B. Walthall as Dr. Garden
Jessie Ralph as Mrs. Hammle
Charles Trowbridge as Inspector Colby
Etienne Girardot as Dr. Doremus (coroner)
William Austin as Sneed (uncredited)
Olaf Hytten as Vance's Butler (uncredited)
Author Bio:
S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 – April 11, 1939) when he wrote detective novels. Wright was an important figure in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York, and under the pseudonym (which he originally used to conceal his identity) he created the once immensely popular fictional detective Philo Vance, a sleuth and aesthete who first appeared in books in the 1920s, then in movies and on the radio.
The Garden Murder Case #9
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