“With pleasure.” Vance took a few puffs on his cigarette and lazily watched the smoke curl upward.35
“Y’ know, Markham,” he began, in his emotionless drawl, “every genuine work of art has a quality which the critics call élan—namely, enthusiasm and spontaneity. A copy, or imitation, lacks that distinguishing characteristic; it’s too perfect, too carefully done, too exact. Even enlightened scions of the law, I fancy, are aware that there is bad drawing in Botticelli and disproportions in Rubens, what? In an original, d’ ye see, such flaws don’t matter. But an imitator never puts ’em in: he doesn’t dare—he’s too intent on getting all the details correct. The imitator works with a self-consciousness and a meticulous care which the artist, in the throes of creative labor, never exhibits. And here’s the point: there’s no way of imitating that enthusiasm and spontaneity—that élan—which an original painting possesses. However closely a copy may resemble an original, there’s a vast psychological difference between them. The copy breathes an air of insincerity, of ultra-perfection, of conscious effort.… You follow me, eh?”
“Most instructive, my dear Ruskin.”
Vance meekly bowed his appreciation, and proceeded pleasantly. “Now, let us consider the Odell murder. You and Heath are agreed that it is a commonplace, brutal, sordid, unimaginative crime. But, unlike you two bloodhounds on the trail, I have ignored its mere appearances and have analyzed its various factors—I have looked at it psychologically, so to speak. And I have discovered that it is not a genuine and sincere crime—that is to say, an original—but only a sophisticated, self-conscious and clever imitation, done by a skilled copyist. 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.”
“Pray continue,” urged Markham, with exaggerated politeness. His manner was jocular, but something in his tone led me to believe that he was seriously interested.
“What is true of art is true of life,” Vance resumed placidly. “Every human action, d’ ye see, conveys unconsciously an impression either of genuineness or of spuriousness—of sincerity or calculation. For example, two men at table eat in a similar way, handle their knives and forks in the same fashion, and apparently do the identical things. Although the sensitive spectator cannot put his finger on the points of difference, he nonetheless senses at once which man’s breeding is genuine and instinctive and which man’s is imitative and self-conscious.”
He blew a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling and settled more deeply into his chair.
“Now, Markham, just what are the universally recognized features of a sordid crime of robbery and murder?… Brutality, disorder, haste, ransacked drawers, cluttered desks, broken jewel cases, rings stripped from the victim’s fingers, severed pendant chains, torn clothing, tipped-over chairs, upset lamps, broken vases, twisted draperies, strewn floors, and so forth. Such are the accepted immemorial indications—eh, what? But—consider a moment, old chap. Outside of fiction and the drama, in how many crimes do they all appear—all in perfect ordination, and without a single element to contradict the general effect? That is to say, how many actual crimes are technically perfect in their settings?… None! And why? Simply because nothing actual in this life—nothing that is spontaneous and genuine—runs to accepted form in every detail. The law of chance and fallibility invariably steps in.”
He made a slight indicative gesture.
“But regard this particular crime: look at it closely. What do you find? You will perceive that its mise en scène has been staged, and its drama enacted, down to every minute detail—like a Zola novel. 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.”
Markham was silent for a while.
“You deny even the remote possibility of a common thief having murdered the girl?” he asked at length; and now there was no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“If a common thief did it,” contended Vance, “then there’s no science of psychology, there are no philosophic truths, and there are no laws of art. If it was a genuine crime of robbery, then, by the same token, there is no difference whatever between an old master and a clever technician’s copy.”
“You’d entirely eliminate robbery as the motive, I take it.”
“The robbery,” Vance affirmed, “was only a manufactured detail. The fact that the crime was committed by a highly astute person indicates unquestionably that there was a far more potent motive behind it. Any man capable of so ingenious and clever a piece of deception is obviously a person of education and imagination; and he most certainly would not have run the stupendous risk of killing a woman unless he had feared some overwhelming disaster—unless, indeed, her continuing to live would have caused him greater mental anguish, and would have put him in greater jeopardy, even than the crime itself. Between two colossal dangers, he chose the murder as the lesser.”
Markham did not speak at once; he seemed lost in reflection. But presently he turned and, fixing Vance with a dubious stare, said, “What about that chiselled jewel box? A professional burglar’s jimmy wielded by an experienced hand doesn’t fit into your aesthetic hypothesis—it is, in fact, diametrically opposed to such a theory.”
“I know it only too well.” Vance nodded slowly. “And I’ve been harried and hectored by that steel chisel ever since I beheld the evidence of its work that first morning.… Markham, that chisel is the one genuine note in an otherwise spurious performance. It’s as if the real artist had come along at the moment the copyist had finished his faked picture, and painted in a single small object with the hand of a master.”
“But doesn’t that bring us back inevitably to Skeel?”
“Skeel—ah, yes. That’s the explanation, no doubt; but not the way you conceive it. Skeel ripped the box open—I don’t question that; but—deuce take it!—it’s the only thing he did do; it’s the only thing that was left for him to do. That’s why he got only a ring which La Belle Marguerite was not wearing that night. All her other baubles—to wit, those that adorned her—had been stripped from her and were gone.”
“Why are you so positive on this point?”
“The poker, man—the poker!… Don’t you see? That amateurish assault upon the jewel case with a cast iron coal prodder couldn’t have been made after the case had been prized open—it would have had to be made before. And that seemingly insane attempt to break steel with cast iron was part of the stage setting. The real culprit didn’t care if he got the case open or not. He merely wanted it to look as if he had tried to get it open; so he used the poker and then left it lying beside the dented box.”
“I see what you mean.” This point, I think, impressed Markham more strongly than any other Vance had raised; for the presence of the poker on the dressing table had not been explained away either by Heath or Inspector Brenner.… “Is that the reason you questioned Skeel as if he might have been present when your other visitor was there?”
“Exactly. By the evidence of the jewel case I knew he either was in the apartment when the bogus crime of robbery was being staged, or else had come upon the scene when it was over and the stage director had cleared out.… From his reactions to my questions I rather fancy he was present.”
“Hiding in the closet?”
“Yes.