The Benson Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Anyway,” he submitted, “you didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing my humiliation as you prophesied.”

  Vance looked up in simulated surprise.

  “Didn’t I, now?” Then he added sorrowfully: “Life is so full of disappointments, y’know.”

  Chapter VIII

  Vance Accepts a Challenge

  (Saturday, June 15th; 4 p.m.)

  After Markham had telephoned Heath the details of the interview we returned to the Stuyvesant Club. Ordinarily the District Attorney’s office shuts down at one o’clock on Saturdays; but to-day the hour had been extended because of the importance attaching to Miss St. Clair’s visit. Markham had lapsed into an introspective silence which lasted until we were again seated in the alcove of the Club’s lounge-room. Then he spoke irritably.

  “Damn it! I shouldn’t have let her go…. I still have a feeling she’s guilty.”

  Vance assumed an air of gushing credulousness.

  “Oh, really! I dare say you’re so psychic. Been that way all your life, no doubt. And haven’t you had lots and lots of dreams that come true? I’m sure you’ve often had a ’phone call from someone you were thinking about at the moment. A delectable gift. Do you read palms, also? … Why not have the lady’s horoscope cast?”

  “I have no evidence as yet,” Markham retorted, “that your belief in her innocence is founded on anything more substantial that your impressions.”

  “Ah, but it is,” averred Vance. “I know she’s innocent. Furthermore, I know that no woman could possibly have fired the shot.”

  “Don’t get the erroneous idea in your head that a woman couldn’t have manipulated a forty-five army Colt.”

  “Oh, that?” Vance dismissed the notion with a shrug. “The material indications of the crime don’t enter into my calculations, y’know—I leave ’em entirely to you lawyers and the lads with the bulging deltoids. I have other, and surer, ways of reaching conclusions. That’s why I told you that if you arrested any woman for shooting Benson you’d be blundering most shamefully.”

  Markham grunted indignantly.

  “And yet you seem to have repudiated all processes of deduction whereby the truth may be arrived at. Have you, by any chance, entirely renounced your faith in the operations of the human mind?”

  “Ah, there speaks the voice of God’s great common people!” exclaimed Vance. “Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing, there is no explanation. A comfortable point of view. It relieves one from all care and uncertainty. Don’t you find the world a very sweet and wonderful place?”

  Markham adopted an attitude of affable forbearance.

  “You spoke at lunch-time, I believe, of one infallible method of detecting crime. Would you care to divulge this profound and priceless secret to a mere district attorney?”

  Vance bowed with exaggerated courtesy.1

  “Delighted, I’m sure,” he returned. “I referred to the science of individual character and the psychology of human nature. We all do things, d’ye see, in a certain individual way, according to our temp’raments. Every human act—no matter how large or how small—is a direct expression of a man’s personality, and bears the inev’table impress of his nature. Thus, a musician, by looking at a sheet of music, is able to tell at once whether it was composed, for example, by Beethoven, or Schubert, or Debussy, or Chopin. And an artist, by looking at a canvas knows immediately whether it is a Corot, a Harpignies, a Rembrandt, or a Franz Hals. And just as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two natures are exactly alike; the combination of ingredients which go to make up our personalities, varies in each individual. That is why, when twenty artists, let us say, sit down to paint the same subject, each one conceives and executes in a different manner. The result in each case is a distinct and unmistakable expression of the personality of the painter who did it…. It’s really rather simple, don’t y’know.”

  “Your theory, doubtless, would be comprehensible to an artist,” said Markham, in a tone of indulgent irony. “But its metaphysical refinements are, I admit, considerably beyond the grasp of a vulgar worldling like myself.”

  “‘The mind inclined to what is false rejects the nobler course,’” murmured Vance with a sigh.

  “There is,” argued Markham, “a slight difference between art and crime.”

  “Psychologically, old chap, there’s none,” Vance amended evenly. “Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method and organisation. Moreover, crimes vary fully as much in their manner, their aspects, and their general nature, as do works of art. Indeed, a carefully planned crime is just as direct an expression of the individual as is a painting, for instance. And therein lies the one great possibility of detection. Just as an expert æsthetician can analyse a picture and tell you who painted it, or the personality and temperament of the person who painted it, so can the expert psychologist analyse a crime and tell you who committed it—that is, if he happens to be acquainted with the person, or else can describe to you, with almost mathematical surety, the criminal’s nature and character…. And that, my dear Markham, is the only sure and inev’table means of determining human guilt. All others are mere guess-work, unscientific, uncertain, and—perilous.”

  Throughout this explanation Vance’s manner had been almost casual; yet the very serenity and assurance of his attitude conferred upon his words a curious sense of authority. Markham had listened with interest, though it could be seen that he did not regard Vance’s theorising seriously.

  “Your system ignores motive altogether,” he objected.

  “Naturally,” Vance replied, “since it’s an irrelevant factor in most crimes. Every one of us, my dear chap, has just as good a motive for killing at least a score of men, as the motives which actuate ninety-nine crimes out of a hundred. And, when anyone is murdered, there are dozens of innocent people who had just as strong a motive for doing it as had the actual murderer. Really, y’know, the fact that a man has a motive is no evidence whatever that he’s guilty—such motives are too universal a possession of the human race. Suspecting a man of murder because he has a motive is like suspecting a man of running away with another man’s wife because he has two legs. The reason that some people kill and others don’t is a matter of temp’rament—of individual psychology. It all comes back to that…. And another thing: when a person does possess a real motive—something tremendous and overpowering—he’s pretty apt to keep it to himself, to hide it and guard it carefully—eh, what? He may even have disguised the motive through years of preparation; or the motive may have been born within five minutes of the crime through the unexpected discovery of facts a decade old…. So, d’ye see, the absence of any apparent motive in a crime might be regarded as more incriminating than the presence of one.”

  “You are going to have some difficulty in eliminating the idea of cui bono from the consideration of crime.”

  “I dare say,” agreed Vance. “The idea of cui bono is just silly enough to be impregnable. And yet, many persons would be benefited by almost anyone’s death. Kill Sumner, and, on that theory, you could arrest the entire membership of the Authors’ League.”

  “Opportunity, at any rate,” persisted Markham, “is an insuperable factor in crime—and by opportunity I mean that affinity of circumstances and conditions which make a particular crime possible, feasible and convenient for a particular person.”

  “Another irrelevant factor,” asserted Vance. “Think of the opportunities we have every day to murder people we dislike! Only the other night I had ten insufi’rable bores to dinner in my apartment—a social devoir. But I refrained—with consid’rable effort, I admit—from putting arsenio in the Pontet Canet. The Borgias and I, y’see, merely belong to different psychological categ’ries. On the other hand, had I been resolved to do murder, I would—like those resourceful cinquecento patricians—have
created by own opportunity…. And there’s the rub—one can either make an opportunity or disguise the fact that he had it, with false alibis and various other tricks. You remember the case of the murderer who called the police to break into his victim’s house before the latter had been killed, saying he suspected foul play, and who then preceded the policemen indoors and stabbed the man as they were trailing up the stairs.”2

  “Well, what of actual proximity or presence—the proof of a person being on the scene of the crime at the time it was committed?”

  “Again misleading,” Vance declared. “An innocent person’s presence is too often used as a shield by the real murderer who is actu’lly absent. A clever criminal can commit a crime from a distance through an agency that is present. Also, a clever criminal can arrange an alibi and then go to the scene of the crime disguised and unrecognised. There are far too many convincing ways of being present when one is believed to be absent—and vice versa…. But we can never part from our individualities and our natures. And that is why all crime inev’tably comes back to human psychology—the one fixed undisguisable basis of deduction.”

  “It’s a wonder to me,” said Markham, “in view of your theories, that you don’t advocate dismissing nine-tenths of the police force and installing a gross or two of those psychological machines so popular with the Sunday Supplement editor.”

  Vance smoked a minute meditatively.

  “I’ve read about ’em. Int’restin’ toys. They can no doubt indicate a certain augmented emotional stress when the patient transfers his attention from the pious platitudes of Dr. Frank Crane to a problem in spherical trigonometry. But if an innocent person were harnessed up to the various tubes, galvanometers, electro-magnets, glass plates, and brass knobs of one of these apparatuses, and then quizzed about some recent crime, your indicat’ry needle would cavort about like a Russian dancer as a result of sheer nervous panic on the patient’s part.”

  Markham smiled patronisingly.

  “And I suppose the needle would remain static with a guilty person in contact?”

  “Oh, on the contr’ry,” Vance’s tone was unruffled. “The needle would bob up and down just the same—but not because he was guilty. If he was stupid, for instance, the needle would jump as a result of his resentment at a seemingly newfangled third-degree torture. And if he was intelligent, the needle would jump because of his suppressed mirth at the puerility of the legal mind for indulging in such nonsense.”

  “You move me deeply,” said Markham. “My head is spinning like a turbine. But there are those of us poor worldlings who believe that criminality is a defect of the brain.”

  “So it is,” Vance readily agreed. “But unfortunately the entire human race possesses the defect. The virtuous ones haven’t, so to speak, the courage of their defects…. However, if you were referring to a criminal type, then, alas! we must part company. It was Lombroso, that darling of the yellow journals, who invented the idea of the congenital criminal. Real scientists like DuBois, Karl Pearson and Goring have shot his idiotic theories full of holes.”3

  “I am floored by your erudition,” declared Markham, as he signalled to a passing attendant and ordered another cigar. “I console myself, however, with the fact that, as a rule, murder will leak out.”

  Vance smoked his cigarette in silence, looking thoughtfully out through the window up at the hazy June sky.

  “Markham,” he said at length, “the number of fantastic ideas extant about criminals is pos’tively amazing. How a sane person can subscribe to that ancient hallucination that ‘murder will out’ is beyond me. It rarely ‘outs,’ old dear. And, if it did ‘out,’ why a Homicide Bureau? Why all this whirlin’-dervish activity by the police whenever a body is found? … The poets are to blame for this bit of lunacy. Chaucer probably started it with his ‘Mordre wol out,’ and Shakespeare helped it along by attributing to murder a miraculous organ that speaks in lieu of a tongue. It was some poet, too, no doubt, who conceived the fancy that carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer…. Would you, as the great Protector of the Faithful, dare tell the police to wait calmly in their offices, or clubs, or favourite beauty-parlours—or wherever policemen do their waiting—until a murder ‘outs’? Poor dear!—if you did, they’d ask the Governor for your detention as particeps criminis, or apply for a de lunatico inquirendo.”4

  Markham grunted good-naturedly. He was busy cutting and lighting his cigar.

  “I believe you chaps have another hallucination about crime,” continued Vance, “namely, that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. This weird notion is even explained on some recondite and misty psychological ground. But, I assure you, psychology teaches no such prepost’rous doctrine. If ever a murderer returned to the body of his victim for any reason other than to rectify some blunder he had made, then he is a subject for Broadmoor—or Bloomingdale…. How easy it would be for the police if this fanciful notion were true! They’d merely have to sit down at the scene of the crime, play bezique or Mah Jongg until the murderer returned, and then escort him to the bastille, what? The true psychological instinct in anyone having committed a punishable act is to get as far away from the scene of it as the limits of this world will permit.” 5

  “In the present case, at any rate,” Markham reminded him, “we are neither waiting inactively for the murder to out, nor sitting in Benson’s living-room trusting to the voluntary return of the criminal.”

  “Either course would achieve success as quickly as the one you are now pursuing,” Vance said.

  “Not being gifted with your singular insight,” retorted Markham, “I can only follow the inadequate processes of human reasoning.”

  “No doubt,” Vance agreed commiseratingly. “And the results of your activities thus far force me to the conclusion that a man with a handful of legalistic logic can successfully withstand the most obst’nate and heroic assaults of ordin’ry common sense.”

  Markham was piqued.

  “Still harping on the St. Clair woman’s innocence, eh? However, in view of the complete absence of any tangible evidence pointing elsewhere, you must admit I have no choice of courses.”

  “I admit nothing of the kind,” Vance told him; “for, I assure you, there is an abundance of evidence pointing elsewhere. You simply failed to see it.”

  “You think so!” Vance’s nonchalant cocksureness had at last overthrown Markham’s equanimity. “Very well, old man; I hereby enter an emphatic denial to all your fine theories; and I challenge you to produce a single piece of this evidence which you say exists.”

  He threw his words out with asperity, and gave a curt, aggressive gesture with his extended fingers, to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

  Vance, too, I think, was pricked a little.

  “Y’know, Markham, old dear, I’m no avenger of blood, or vindicator of the honour of society. The role would bore me.”

  Markham smiled loftily, but made no reply.

  Vance smoked meditatively for a while. Then, to my amazement, he turned calmly and deliberately to Markham, and said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice:

  “I’m going to accept your challenge. It’s a bit alien to my tastes; but the problem, y’know, rather appeals to me; it presents the same diff’culties as the Concert Champétre affair—a question of disputed authorship, as it were.”6

  Markham abruptly suspended the motion of lifting his cigar to his lips. He had scarcely intended his challenge literally; it had been uttered more in the nature of a verbal defiance, and he scrutinised Vance a bit uncertainly. Little did he realise that the other’s casual acceptance of his unthinking and but half-serious challenge was to alter the entire criminal history of New York.

  “Just how do you intend to proceed?” he asked.

  Vance waved his hand carelessly.

  “Like Napoleon, je m’en gage, et puis je vois. However, I must have your word that you’ll give me every possible assistance, and will refrain from all profound
legal objections.”

  Markham pursed his lips. He was frankly perplexed by the unexpected manner in which Vance had met his defiance. But immediately he gave a good-natured laugh, as if, after all, the matter was of no serious consequence.

  “Very well,” he assented. “You have my word…. And now what?”

  After a moment Vance lit a fresh cigarette, and rose languidly.

  “First,” he announced, “I shall determine the exact height of the guilty person. Such a fact will, no doubt, come under the head of indicat’ry evidence—eh, what?”

  Markham stared at him incredulously.

  “How, in heaven’s name, are you going to do that?”

  “By those primitive deductive methods to which you so touchingly pin your faith,” he answered easily. “But come; let us repair to the scene of the crime.”

  He moved towards the door, Markham reluctantly following in a state of perplexed irritation.

  “But you know the body was removed,” the latter protested; “and the place by now has no doubt been straightened up.”

  “Thank heaven for that!” murmured Vance. “I’m not particularly fond of corpses; and untidiness, y’know, annoys me frightfully.”

  As we emerged into Madison Avenue he signalled to the commissionaire for a taxicab, and without a word urged us into it.

  “This is all nonsense,” Markham declared ill-naturedly, as we started on our journey up town. “How do you expect to find any clues now? By this time everything has been obliterated.”

  “Alas, my dear Markham,” lamented Vance, in a tone of mock solicitude, “how woefully deficient you are in philosophic theory! If anything, no matter how inf’nitesimal, could really be obliterated, the universe, y’know, would cease to exist—the cosmic problem would be solved, and the Creator would write Q.E.D. across an empty firmament. Our only chance of going on with this illusion we call Life, d’ye see, lies in the fact that consciousness is like an inf’nite decimal point. Did you, as a child, ever try to complete the decimal, one-third, by filling a whole sheet of paper with the numeral three? You always had the fraction, one-third, left don’t y’know. If you could have eliminated the smallest one-third, after having set down ten thousand threes, the problem would have ended. So with life, my dear fellow. It’s only because we can’t erase or obliterate anything that we go on existing.”