The Benson Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Such was my own belief,” said Vance. “And—my word!—it’s a deucedly long walk out here, what?”

  He turned to Markham with a tantalising smile.

  “Really, y’know, Miss St. Clair couldn’t have been expected to reach here before one.”

  Markham, grim and resolute, made no reply.

  “And now,” pursued Vance, “I should love to know under what circumstances the invitation to dinner was extended.”

  A shadow darkened her face, but her voice remained even.

  “I had been losing a lot of money through Mr. Benson’s firm, and suddenly my intuition told me that he was purposely seeing to it that I did lose, and that he could, if he desired, help me to recoup.” She dropped her eyes. “He had been annoying me with his attentions for some time; and I didn’t put any despicable scheme past him. I went to his office, and told him quite plainly what I suspected. He replied that if I’d dine with him that night we could talk it over. I knew what his object was, but I was so desperate I decided to go any way, hoping I might plead with him.”

  “And how did you happen to mention to Mr. Benson the exact time your little dinner would terminate?”

  She looked at Vance in astonishment, but answered unhesitatingly.

  “He said something about—making a gay night of it; and then I told him—very emphatically—that if I went I would leave him sharply at midnight, as was my invariable rule on all parties…. You see,” she added, “I study very hard at my singing, and going home at midnight, no matter what the occasion, is one of the sacrifices—or rather, restrictions—I impose on myself.”

  “Most commendable and most wise!” commented Vance. “Was this fact generally known among your acquaintances?”

  “Oh, yes. It even resulted in my being nicknamed Cinderella.”

  “Specifically, did Colonel Ostrander and Mr. Pfyfe know it?”

  “Yes.”

  Vance thought a moment.

  “How did you happen to go to tea at Mr. Benson’s home the day of the murder, if you were to dine with him that night?”

  A flush stained her cheeks.

  “There was nothing wrong in that,” she declared. “Somehow, after I had left Mr. Benson’s office, I revolted against my decision to dine with him, and I went to his house—I had gone back to the office first, but he had left—to make a final appeal, and to beg him to release me from my promise. But he laughed the matter off, and after insisting that I have tea, sent me home in a taxicab to dress for dinner. He called for me about half-past seven.”

  “And when you pleaded with him to release you from your promise you sought to frighten him by recalling Captain Leacock’s threat; and he said it was only bluff.”

  Again the woman’s astonishment was manifest.

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  Vance gave her a soothing smile.

  “Colonel Ostrander told me he saw you and Mr. Benson at the Marseilles.”

  “Yes; and I was terribly ashamed. He knew what Mr. Benson was, and had warned me against him only a few days before.”

  “I was under the impression that the Colonel and Mr. Benson were good friends.”

  “They were—up to a week ago. But the Colonel lost more money than I did in a stock pool which Mr. Benson engineered recently, and he intimated to me very strongly that Mr. Benson had deliberately misadvised us to his own benefit. He didn’t even speak to Mr. Benson that night at the Marseilles.”

  “What about these rich and precious stones that accompanied your tea with Mr. Benson?”

  “Bribes,” she answered; and her contemptuous smile was a more eloquent condemnation of Benson than if she had resorted to the bitterest castigation. “The gentleman sought to turn my head with them. I was offered a string of pearls to wear to dinner; but I declined them. And I was told that, if I saw things in the right light—or some such charming phrase—I could have jewels like them for my very, very own—perhaps even those identical ones, on the twenty-first.”

  “Of course—the twenty-first,” grinned Vance. “Markham, are you listening? On the twenty-first Leander’s note falls due, and if it’s not paid the jewels are forfeited.”

  He addressed himself again to Miss St. Clair.

  “Did Mr. Benson have the jewels with him at dinner?”

  “Oh, no! I think my refusal of the pearls rather discouraged him.”

  Vance paused, looking at her with ingratiating cordiality.

  “Tell us now, please, of the gun episode—in your own words, as the lawyers say, hoping to entangle you later.”

  But she evidently feared no entanglement.

  “The morning after the murder Captain Leacock came here and said he had gone to Mr. Benson’s house about half-past twelve with the intention of shooting him. But he had seen Mr. Pfyfe outside and, assuming he was calling had given up the idea and gone home. I feared that Mr. Pfyfe had seen him, and I told him it would be safer to bring his pistol to me and to say, if questioned, that he’d lost it in France…. You see, I really thought he had shot Mr. Benson and was—well, lying like a gentleman, to spare my feelings. Then, when he took the pistol from me with the purpose of throwing it away altogether, I was even more certain of it.”

  She smiled faintly at Markham.

  “That was why I refused to answer your questions. I wanted you to think that maybe I had done it, so you’d not suspect Captain Leacock.”

  “But he wasn’t lying at all,” said Vance.

  “I know now that he wasn’t. And I should have known it before. He’d never have brought the pistol to me if he’d been guilty.”

  A film came over her eyes.

  “And—poor boy!—he confessed because he thought that I was guilty.”

  “That’s precisely the harrowin’ situation,” nodded Vance. “But where did he think you had obtained a weapon?”

  “I know many army men—friends of his and of Major Benson’s. And last summer at the mountains I did considerable pistol practice for the fun of it. Oh, the idea was reasonable enough.”

  Vance rose and made a courtly bow.

  “You’ve been most gracious—and most helpful,” he said. “Y’see, Mr. Markham had various theories about the murder. The first, I believe, was that you alone were the Madame Borgia. The second was that you and the Captain did the deed together—à quatre mains, as it were. The third was that the Captain pulled the trigger a cappella. And the legal mind is so exquisitely developed that it can believe in several conflicting theories at the same time. The sad thing about the present case is that Mr. Markham still leans towards the belief that both of you are guilty, individually and collectively. I tried to reason with him before coming here; but I failed. Therefore, I insisted upon his hearing from your own charming lips your story of the affair.”

  He went up to Markham, who sat glaring at him with lips compressed.

  “Well, old chap,” he remarked pleasantly, “surely you are not going to persist in your obsession that either Miss St. Clair or Captain Leacock is guilty, what? … And won’t you relent and unshackle the Captain as I begged you to?”

  He extended his arms in a theatrical gesture of supplication.

  Markham’s wrath was at the breaking point, but he got up deliberately and, going to the woman, held out his hand.

  “Miss St. Clair,” he said kindly—and again I was impressed by the bigness of the man—“I wish to assure you that I have dismissed the idea of your guilt, and also Captain Leacock’s, from what Mr. Vance terms my incredibly rigid and unreceptive mind…. I forgive him, however, because he has saved me from doing you a very grave injustice. And I will see that you have your Captain back as soon as the paper can be signed for his release.”

  As we walked out on to Riverside Drive, Markham turned savagely on Vance.

  “So! I was keeping her precious Captain locked up, and you were pleading with me to let him go! You know damned well I didn’t think either one of them was guilty—you—you lounge lizard!”

  Vance
sighed.

  “Dear me! Don’t you want to be of any help at all in this case?” he asked sadly.

  “What good did it do you to make an ass of me in front of that woman?” spluttered Markham. “I can’t see that you got anywhere, with all your tomfoolery.”

  “What!” Vance registered utter amazement. “The testimony you’ve heard to-day is going to help immeasurably in convicting the culprit. Furthermore, we know about the gloves and handbag, and who the lady was that called at Benson’s office, and what Miss St. Clair did between twelve and one, and why she dined alone with Alvin, and why she first had tea with him, and how the jewels came to be there, and why the Captain took her his gun and then threw it away, and why he confessed…. My word! Doesn’t all this knowledge soothe you? It rids the situation of so much debris.”

  He stopped and lit a cigarette.

  “The really important thing the lady told us was that her friends knew she invariably departed at midnight when she went out of an evening. Don’t overlook or belittle that point, old dear; it’s most pert’nent. I told you long ago that the person who shot Benson knew she was dining with him that night.”

  “You’ll be telling me next you know who killed him,” Markham scoffed.

  Vance sent a ring of smoke circling upward.

  “I’ve known all along who shot the blighter.”

  Markham snorted derisively.

  “Indeed! And when did this revelation burst upon you?”

  “Oh, not more than five minutes after I entered Benson’s house that first morning,” replied Vance.

  “Well, well! Why didn’t you confide in me, and avoid all these trying activities?”

  “Quite impossible,” Vance explained jocularly. “You were not ready to receive my apocryphal knowledge. It was first necess’ry to lead you patiently by the hand out of the various dark forests and morasses into which you insisted upon straying. You’re so dev’lishly unimag’native, don’t y’know.”

  A taxicab was passing, and he hailed it.

  “Eighty-seven West Forty-eighth Street,” he directed.

  Then he took Markham’s arm confidingly.

  “Now for a brief chat with Mrs. Platz. And then—then I shall pour into your ear all my maidenly secrets.”

  Chapter XXI

  Sartorial Revelations

  (Wednesday, June 19th; 5.30 p.m.)

  The housekeeper regarded our visit that afternoon with marked uneasiness. Though she was a large powerful woman, her body seemed to have lost some of its strength, and her face showed signs of prolonged anxiety. Snitkin informed us, when we entered, that she had carefully read every newspaper account of the progress of the case, and had questioned him interminably on the subject.

  She entered the living-room with scarcely an ackowledgment of our presence, and took the chair Vance placed for her like a woman resigning herself to a dreaded but inevitable ordeal. When Vance looked at her keenly, she gave him a frightened glance and turned her face away, as if, in the second their eyes met, she had read his knowledge of some secret she had been jealously guarding.

  Vance began his questioning without prelude or protasis.

  “Mrs. Platz, was Mr. Benson very particular about his toupee—that is, did he often receive his friends without having it on?”

  The woman appeared relieved.

  “Oh, no, sir—never.”

  “Think back, Mrs. Platz. Has Mr. Benson never, to your knowledge, been in anyone’s company without his toupee?”

  She was silent for some time, her brows contracted.

  “Once I saw him take off his wig and show it to Colonel Ostrander, an elderly gentleman who used to call here very often. But Colonel Ostrander was an old friend of his. He told me they lived together once.”

  “No one else?”

  Again she frowned thoughtfully.

  “No,” she said, after several minutes.

  “What about the tradespeople?”

  “He was very particular about them…. And strangers, too,” she added. “When he used to sit in here in hot weather without his wig, he always pulled the shade on that window.” She pointed to the one nearest the hallway. “You can look in it from the steps.”

  “I’m glad you brought up that point,” said Vance. “And anyone standing on the steps could tap on the window or the iron bars, and attract the attention of anyone in this room?”

  “Oh, yes, sir—easily. I did it myself once, when I went on an errand and forgot my key.”

  “It’s quite likely, don’t you think, that the person who shot Mr. Benson obtained admittance that way?”

  “Yes, sir.” She grasped eagerly at the suggestion.

  “The person would have had to know Mr. Benson pretty well to tap on the window instead of ringing the bell. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs. Platz?”

  “Yes—sir.” Her tone was doubtful: evidently the point was a little beyond her.

  “If a stranger had tapped on the window, would Mr. Benson have admitted him without his toupee?”

  “Oh, no—he wouldn’t have let a stranger in.”

  “You are sure the bell didn’t ring that night?”

  “Positive, sir.” The answer was very emphatic.

  “Is there a light on the front steps?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If Mr. Benson had looked out of the window to see who was tapping, could he have recognised the person at night?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “I didn’t know—I don’t think so.”

  “Is there any way you can see through the front door, who is outside, without opening it?”

  “No, sir. Sometimes I wished there was.”

  “Then, if the person knocked on the window, Mr. Benson must have recognised the voice?”

  “It looks that way, sir.”

  “And you’re certain no one could have got in without a key?”

  “How could they? The door locks by itself,”

  “It’s the regulation spring-lock, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then it must have a catch you can turn off so that the door will open from either side even though it’s latched.”

  “It did have a catch like that,” she exclaimed, “but Mr. Benson had it fixed so’s it wouldn’t work. He said it was too dangerous—I might go out and leave the house unlocked.”

  Vance stepped into the hallway, and I heard him opening and shutting the front door.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Platz,” he observed, when he came back. “Now tell me: are you quite sure no one had a key?”

  “Yes, sir. No one but me and Mr. Benson had a key.”

  Vance nodded his acceptance of her statement.

  “You said you left your bedroom door open on the night Mr. Benson was shot…. Do you generally leave it open?”

  “No, I ’most always shut it. But it was terrible close that night.”

  “Then it was merely an accident you left it open?”

  “As you might say.”

  “If your door had been closed as usual, could you have heard the shot, do you think?”

  “If I’d been awake, maybe. Not if I was sleeping, though. They got heavy doors in these old houses, sir.”

  “And they’re beautiful, too,” commented Vance.

  He looked admiringly at the massive mahogany double door that opened into the hall.

  “Y’know, Markham, our so-called civ’lisation is nothing more than the persistent destruction of everything that’s beautiful and enduring, and the designing of cheap makeshifts. You should read Oswald Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlands—a most penetratin’ document. I wonder some enterprisin’ publisher hasn’t embalmed it in our native argot.1 The whole history of this degen’rate era we call modern civ’lisation can be seen in our woodwork. Look at that fine old door, for instance, with its bevelled panels and ornamented bolection, and its Ionic pilasters and carved lintel. And then compare it with the flat, flimsy, machine-made, shellacked boards which are turned out
by the thousand to-day. Sic transit….”

  He studied the door for some time: then turned abruptly back to Mrs. Platz, who was eyeing him curiously and with mounting apprehension.

  “What did Mr. Benson do with the box of jewels when he went out to dinner?” he asked.

  “Nothing, sir,” she answered nervously. “He left them on the table there.”

  “Did you see them after he had gone?”

  “Yes; and I was going to put them away. But I decided I’d better not touch them.”

  “And nobody came to the door, or entered the house, after Mr. Benson left?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “I’m positive, sir.”

  Vance rose, and began to pace the floor. Suddenly, just as he was passing the woman, he stopped and faced her.

  “Was your maiden name Hoffman, Mrs. Platz?”

  The thing she had been dreading had come. Her face paled, her eyes opened wide, and her lower lip drooped a little.

  Vance stood looking at her, not unkindly. Before she could regain control of herself, he said:

  “I had the pleasure of meeting your charmin’ daughter recently.”

  “My daughter …?” the woman managed to stammer.

  “Miss Hoffman, y’know—the attractive young lady with the blond hair—Mr. Benson’s secret’ry.”

  The woman sat erect, and spoke through clamped teeth.

  “She’s not my daughter.”

  “Now, now, Mrs. Platz!” Vance chid her, as if speaking to a child. “Why this foolish attempt at deception? You remember how worried you were when I accused you of having a personal interest in the lady who was here to tea with Mr. Benson? You were afraid I thought it was Miss Hoffman…. But why should you be anxious about her, Mrs. Platz? I’m sure she’s a very nice girl. And you really can’t blame her for preferring the name of Hoffman to that of Platz. Platz means generally a place, though it also means a crash or an explosion; and sometimes a Platz is a bun or a yeast-cake. But a Hoffman is a courtier—much nicer than being a yeast-cake, what?”