The Benson Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doing things well without any extensive practise. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played in our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.

  In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favourite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.

  Incidentally, he was one of the most uncanny poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.

  Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had co-ordinated and rationalised this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic principles of psychology and all his courses at college had either centred about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence and pleading, Vance was reconnoitring the whole field of cultural endeavour. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics, and political economy, philosophy anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages.4 But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.

  Vance’s mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savoured of credulousness, and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.

  “Until we can approach all human problems,” he once remarked, “with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guinea-pig strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth.”

  Vance led an active, but by no means animated social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal—I cannot remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct—and when he went forth into the social world it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his “duty” affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o’clock when the District Attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York’s shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.

  Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette, when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front-door bell, ushered the District Attorney into the living-room.

  “By all that’s holy!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. “New York’s leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!”

  “And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it,” Vance replied.

  It was evident, however, that the District Attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered.

  “Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I’m in a great hurry, and merely dropped by to keep my promise…. The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered.”

  Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly.

  “Really, now,” he drawled. “How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that’s no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie’s incomp’rable coffee.” And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.

  Markham hesitated a second or two.

  “Oh, well. A couple of minutes won’t make any difference. But only a gulp.” And he sank into a chair facing us.

  Chapter II

  At the Scene of the Crime

  (Friday, June 14th; 9 a.m.)

  John F.-X Markham, as you remember, had been elected District Attorney of New York County on the Independent Reform Ticket during one of the city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. He served his four years, and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents. He was an indefatigable worker, and projected the District Attorney’s office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his constituents, but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in those who had opposed him on partisan lines.

  He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable one that even to-day it is not infrequently referred to in legal and political discussions.

  Markham was a tall, strongly-built man in the middle forties, with a clean-shaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly grey hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political office-holders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid foundation of good-breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of gentility.

  When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority. It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal justice—had in that moment been born in Markham’s body. I was to witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance’s living-room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive sternness of his expression and I knew that he was deeply troubled over Alvin Benson’s murder.

  He swallowed his coffee rapidly, and was setting down the cup, when Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked:

  “I say; why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You weren’t, by any chance, the murderer, what?”

  Markham ignored Vance’s levity.

  “I’m on my way to Benson’s. Do you care to come along? You asked for the experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise.”

  I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed, Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the District Attorney on one of his investigations; and that Markham had promised to take him on his next important case. Vance’s interest in the psychology of human behaviour had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which had been of long standing, had made the request possible.

  “You remembe
r everything, don’t you?” Vance replied lazily. “An admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel: it lacked a few minutes of nine. “But what an indecent hour! Suppose someone should see me.”

  Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair.

  “Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o’clock in the morning, you’ll have to hurry. I certainly won’t take you in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. And I most certainly won’t wait over five minutes for you to get dressed.”

  “Why the haste, old dear?” Vance asked, yawning. “The chap’s dead, don’t y’ know; he can’t possibly run away.”

  “Come, get a move on, you orchid,” the other urged. “This affair is no joke. It’s damned serious; and from the looks of it, it’s going to cause an ungodly scandal. What are you going to do?”

  “Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of the common people,” returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.

  He rang for Currie, and ordered his clothes brought to him.

  “I’m attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse, and I want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit? … And a lavender tie, by all means.”

  “I trust you won’t also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.

  “Tut! Tut!” Vance chid him. “You’ve been reading Mr. Hichens. Such heresy in a District Attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear boutonnières. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone players…. But tell me about the departed Benson.”

  Vance was now dressing, with Currie’s assistance, at a rate of speed I had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose I recognised the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.

  “You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe,” the District Attorney said. “Well, early this morning his housekeeper ’phoned the local precinct station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and sitting in his favourite chair in his living-room. The message, of course, was put through at once to the Telegraph Bureau at Headquarters, and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour: later, Major Benson, Alvin’s brother, ’phoned me and asked me, as a special favour, to take charge. I’ve known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn’t very well refuse. So I took a hurried breakfast and started for Benson’s house. He lives on West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped in to see if you cared to go along.”

  “Most consid’rate,” murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. “Come, Van. We’ll all gaze upon the defunot Benson. I’m sure some of Markham’s sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me of the crime; and I’ll feel safer, don’t y’know, with legal talent at hand…. No objections—eh, what, Markham?”

  “Certainly not,” the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the affair to offer any ceremonious objections, and I followed Vance and Markham downstairs.

  As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue, I marvelled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham, forthright, conventional, a trifle austere, and over-serious in his dealing with life; and Vance, casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship: it was as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and sensation that had been denied himself. Markham represented to Vance the solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolised for Markham the care-free, exotio, gipsy spirit of intellectual adventure. Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface; and despite Markham’s exaggerated deprecations of the other’s attitudes and opinions, I believe he respected Vance’s intelligence more profoundly than that of any other man he knew.

  As we rode up town that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy. No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked:

  “What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions, aside from removing one’s hat in the presence of the body?”

  “You keep your hat on,” growled Markham.

  “My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int’restin’! Perhaps one takes off one’s shoes so as not to confuse the footprints.”

  “No,” Markham told him. “The guests remain fully clothed—in which the function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set.”

  “My dear Markham!”—Vance’s tone was one of melancholy reproof—“The horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours was pos’tively Epworth Leaguish.”

  Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance’s badinage.

  “There are one or two things,” he said soberly, “that I think I’d better warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause considerable noise, and there’ll be a lot of jealousy and battling for honours. I won’t be fallen upon and caressed affectionately by the police for coming in at this stage of the game; so be careful not to rub their bristles the wrong way. My assistant, who’s there now, tells me he thinks the Inspector has put Heath in charge. Heath’s a sergeant in the Homicide Bureau, and is undoubtedly convinced at the present moment that I’m taking hold in order to get the publicity.”

  “Aren’t you his technical superior?” asked Vance.

  “Of course; and that makes the situation just so much more delicate…. I wish to God the Major hadn’t called me up.”

  “Eheu!” sighed Vance. “The world is full of Heaths, Beastly nuisances.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Markham hastened to assure him. “Heath is a good man—in fact, as good a man as we’ve got. The mere fact that he was assigned to the case shows how seriously the affair is regarded at Headquarters. There’ll be no unpleasantness about my taking charge, you understand; but I want the atmosphere to be as halcyon as possible. Heath’ll resent my bringing along you two chaps as spectators, anyway; so I beg of you, Vance, emulate the modest violet.”

  “I prefer the blushing rose, if you don’t mind,” Vance protested. “However, I’ll instantly give the hypersensitive Heath one of my choicest Régie cigarettes with the rose-petal tips.”

  “If you do,” smiled Markham, “he’ll probably arrest you as a suspicious character.”

  We had drawn up abruptly in front of an old brown-stone residence on the upper side of Forty-eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a house of the better class, built on a twenty-five foot lot in a day when permanency and beauty were still matters of consideration among the city’s architects. The design was conventional, to accord with the other houses in the block, but a touch of luxury and individuality was to be seen in its decorative copings and in the stone carvings about the entrance and above the windows.

  There was a shallow paved areaway between the street line and the front elevation of the house; but this was enclosed in a high iron railing, and the only entrance was by way of the front door, which was about six feet above the street level at the top of a flight of ten broad stone stairs. Between the entrance and the right-hand wall were two spacious windows covered with heavy iron grilles.

  A considerable crowd of morbid onlookers had gathered in front of the house; and on the steps lounged several alert-looking young men whom I took to be newspaper reporters. The door of our taxicab was opened by a uniformed patrol man who saluted Markham with exaggerated respect and ostentatiously cleared a passage for us through th
e gaping throng of idlers. Another uniformed patrolman stood in the little vestibule, and on recognising Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted with great dignity.

  “Ave, Cœsar, te salutamus” whispered Vance, grinning.

  “Be quiet,” Markham grumbled. “I’ve got troubles enough without your garbled quotations.”

  As we passed through the massive carved-oak front door into the main hallway, we were met by Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, a serious, swarthy young man with a prematurely lined face, whose appearance gave one the impression that most of the woes of humanity were resting upon his shoulders.

  “Good morning, Chief,” he greeted Markham, with eager relief. “I’m damned glad you’ve got here. This case’ll rip things wide open. Cut-and-dried murder, and not a lead.”

  Markham nodded gloomily, and looked past him into the living-room.

  “Who’s here?” he asked.

  “The whole works, from the Chief Inspector down,” Dinwiddie told him, with a hopeless shrug, as if the fact boded ill for all concerned.

  At that moment a tall, massive, middle-aged man with a pink complexion and a closely-cropped white moustache, appeared in the doorway of the living-room. On seeing Markham he came forward stiffly with outstretched hand. I recognised him at once as Chief Inspector O’Brien, who was in command of the entire Police Department. Dignified greetings were exchanged between him and Markham, and then Vance and I were introduced to him. Inspector O’Brien gave us each a curt, silent nod, and turned back to the living-room, with Markham, Dinwiddie, Vance and myself following.

  The room, which was entered by a wide double door about ten feet down the hall, was a spacious one, almost square, and with high ceilings. Two windows gave on the street; and on the extreme right of the north wall, opposite to the front of the house, was another window opening on a paved court. To the left of this window were the sliding doors leading into the dining-room at the rear.