Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in the wood, and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to them while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”

  Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up excitement.

  As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard Heath say in a sullen voice:

  “I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”

  Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office.

  Markham looked at Heath with a slow gracious smile, and shook his head.

  “No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want that relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if Major Benson hadn’t ’phoned me and asked me to lend a hand. And I particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty generally known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the Major is an old friend of mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with the case is kept quiet.”

  Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had, in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he personally liked the District Attorney.

  “If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the Police Department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to see the reporters. . . . And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly, “if there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that, too.”

  “Fair enough,” assented Heath.

  “And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.

  31.Edward Swann, who served as New York County District Attorney from 1916 to 1921, the apparent era of the story, was a Democrat handpicked by Tammany Hall. No independent served as District Attorney after 1909 until the election of Thomas Dewey in 1938. Therefore, John F.-X. Markham must be regarded as fictional, though he may well have been based on William T. Jerome, who was the New York County District Attorney from 1902 to 1909. Jerome had been elected by a coalition of anti-Tammany Democrats, Republicans, and the so-called Citizens Union. He was 43 when first elected and was a crusader against political corruption and crime. Jerome’s uncle Leonard Jerome was the father of Jennie Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill, and the maternal grandfather of Winston Churchill.

  32.Tammany Hall was the name given to the Democratic political cartel that dominated New York politics from 1854 to 1934. Originally the Tammany Society, at its inception, it was part of a network of clubs for “pure Americans.” The name is supposedly drawn from the name of Tamanend, a leader of the Lenape (also known as the Delaware Indians) who occupied the Northeast. By 1798, Aaron Burr began to convert it to a body intended to oppose Alexander Hamilton’s Society of the Cincinnatis, a political organization, and the New York chapter was instrumental in delivering the electoral votes of the State of New York in 1800 to the Democratic-Republicans, defeating John Adams’s presidential relection bid and electing Thomas Jefferson President and Burr vice president.

  A Bob Satterfield cartoon from 1904, showing a reformer who thinks he has buried Tammany Hall.

  33.Robert Hichens (1864–1950) wrote The Green Carnation (1894), which was first published anonymously, A roman à clef about the notorious affair between Oscar Wilde and “Bosie,” Lord Alfred Douglas, it was thought to have been written by Wilde, who denied authorship. Hichens, himself a homosexual, had spent much time in the company of Wilde and Douglas and was eventually revealed as the author. The scenes described in the book and even the dialogue closely mirrored the facts of the relationship between Douglas and Wilde as revealed in the latter’s trial.

  34.Today, traffic on Forty-Eigth Street runs west to east. However, this change did not occur until 1927, when all of the streets south of One Hundred Tenth were made one-way, with the even numbers running west to east and the odd numbers east to west. As early as 1915, Manhattan was experimenting with one-way streets to ease the traffic, but prior to 1927, only streets as high as Forty-Third St. had been converted.

  35.The Epworth League was a Christian youth organization associated with the United Methodist Church; after 1939, it became known as the United Methodist Youth Fellowship, and it continues to flourish today. Its workings were explained in detail in Dan B. Brummett’s Epworth League Methods (1906), updated in 1914 to The Efficient Epworthian. The pledge for members included the following: “I will abstain from all those forms of worldly amusement which can not be taken in the name of the Lord Jesus . . .”

  36.The Régie, as it was known (formally the Sociéte de la Régie Cointéresée des Tabacs de l’Empire Ottoman), was a monopoly granted control of the production of tobacco in Turkey. The cigarettes were sold around the world. Many brands were available with rose petals wrapped around the tips, to avoid abrading the lips of smokers (especially women smokers).

  37.Vance paraphrases the title of a painting of Roman gladiators, Ave Caesar Morituri te Salutant, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1859). The name is based on a quotation from Suetonius: “Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.”

  38.Inlaid with brass, tortoiseshell, or other decorative materials.

  39.America did not officially join in the Great War until 1917; while U.S. troops were in France as early as June 26, 1917, the great mass of American forces joined the conflict in the summer of 1918, fighting until the November armistice. If by June 1918 (if that is the date of these events) Van Dine had spent two years in France, he must have served as a volunteer, one of many who joined the French, British, or Canadian forces prior to the official U.S. declaration of war.

  40.Dashiell Hammett, in his review of The Benson Murder Case in the January 15, 1927, issue of the Saturday Review of Literature, writes, “That his position should have been so slightly disturbed by the impact of such a bullet at such a range is preposterous, but the phenomenon hasn’t anything to do with the plot, so don’t, as I did, waste time trying to figure it out.”

  * [Author’s note:] The book was O. Henry’s Strictly Business, and the place at which it was being held open was, curiously enough, the story entitled “A Municipal Report.”

  [Editor’s note: The book was first published in 1910. Ironically, the story concerns the killing of one Major Caswell.]

  41.A short decorative drapery, hung on a mantelpiece or over a doorway.

  * [Author’s note:] Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of a large up state bank that had failed during the panic of 1907, and during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the post of Police Commissioner.

  [Editor’s note: William Jay Gaynor served as the Mayor of New York from 1910 to 1913. George V. McLaughlin, the New York City Police Commissioner from 1926 to 1927, was a well-regarded police official who fought corruption on the force. McLaughlin had served as state superintendent of banks in 1920.]

  William J. Gaynor, after being shot in 1913. He died shortly thereafter.

  CHAPTER III

  A Lady’s Hand-bag

  (Friday, June 14; 9.30 a.m.)

  The District Attorney and Heath walked up to the body, and stood regarding it.

  “You see,” Heath explained; “he was shot directly from the front. A pretty powerful shot, too; for the bullet passed through the head and struck the woodwork over there by the window.” He pointed to a place on the wainscot a short distance from the floor near the drapery of the window nearest the hallway. “We found the expelled shell, and Captain Hagedorn’s got the bullet.”

  He turned to the fire-arms expert.

  “How about it, Captain? Anything special?”

  Hagedorn raised his head slowly, and gave Heath a myopic frown. Th
en after a few awkward movements, he answered with unhurried precision:

  “A forty-five army bullet—Colt automatic.”

  “Any idea how close to Benson the gun was held?” asked Markham.

  “Yes, sir, I have,” Hagedorn replied, in his ponderous monotone. “Between five and six feet—probably.”

  Heath snorted.

  “‘Probably’,” he repeated to Markham with good natured contempt. “You can bank on it if the Captain says so. . . . You see, sir, nothing smaller than a forty-four or forty-five will stop a man,42 and these steel-capped army bullets go through a human skull like it was cheese. But in order to carry straight to the woodwork the gun had to be held pretty close; and as there aren’t any powder marks on the face, it’s a safe bet to take the Captain’s figures as to distance.”

  At this point we heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner, accompanied by his assistant, bustled in. He shook hands with Markham and Inspector O’Brien, and gave Heath a friendly salutation.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he apologized.

  He was a nervous man with a heavily seamed face and the manner of a real-estate salesman.

  “What have we got here?” he asked, in the same breath, making a wry face at the body in the chair.

  “You tell us, Doc,” retorted Heath.

  Dr. Doremus approached the murdered man with a callous indifference indicative of a long process of hardening. He first inspected the face closely,—he was, I imagine, looking for powder marks. Then he glanced at the bullet hole in the forehead and at the ragged wound in the back of the head.43 Next he moved the dead man’s arm, bent the fingers, and pushed the head a little to the side. Having satisfied himself as to the state of rigor mortis, he turned to Heath.

  “Can we get him on the settee there?”

  Heath looked at Markham inquiringly.

  “All through, sir?”

  Markham nodded, and Heath beckoned to the two men at the front windows and ordered the body placed on the davenport. It retained its sitting posture, due to the hardening of the muscles after death, until the doctor and his assistant straightened out the limbs. The body was then undressed, and Dr. Doremus examined it carefully for other wounds. He paid particular attention to the arms; and he opened both hands wide and scrutinized the palms. At length he straightened up and wiped his hands on a large colored silk handkerchief.

  “Shot through the left frontal,” he announced. “Direct angle of fire. Bullet passed completely through the skull. Exit wound in the left occipital region—base of skull,—you found the bullet, didn’t you? He was awake when shot, and death was immediate—probably never knew what hit him. . . . He’s been dead about—well, I should judge, eight hours; maybe longer.”

  “How about twelve-thirty for the exact time?” asked Heath.

  The doctor looked at his watch.

  “Fits O. K. . . . Anything else?”

  No one answered, and after a slight pause the Chief Inspector spoke.

  “We’d like a post-mortem report to-day, doctor.”

  “That’ll be all right,” Dr. Doremus answered, snapping shut his medical case and handing it to his assistant. “But get the body to the Mortuary as soon as you can.”

  After a brief hand-shaking ceremony, he went out hurriedly.

  Heath turned to the detective who had been standing by the table when we entered.

  “Burke, you ’phone Headquarters to call for the body—and tell ’em to get a move on. Then go back to the office and wait for me.”

  Burke saluted and disappeared.

  Heath then addressed one of the two men who had been inspecting the grilles of the front windows.

  “How about that ironwork, Snitkin?”

  “No chance, Sergeant,” was the answer. “Strong as a jail—both of ’em. Nobody never got in through those windows.”

  “Very good,” Heath told him. “Now you two fellows chase along with Burke.”

  When they had gone the dapper man in the blue serge suit and derby, whose sphere of activity had seemed to be the fireplace, laid two cigarette butts on the table.

  “I found these under the gaslogs, Sergeant,” he explained unenthusiastically. “Not much; but there’s nothing else laying around.”

  “All right, Emery.” Heath gave the butts a disgruntled look. “You needn’t wait, either. I’ll see you at the office later.”

  Hagedorn came ponderously forward.

  “I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to keep this bullet a while. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it. You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”

  Heath smiled tolerantly.

  “What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose it.”

  “I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and, without so much as a glance at either the District Attorney or the Chief Inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.

  Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,” “impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had prompted this strange interrogation.

  As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien entered the hall.

  “Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then, without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you down town.”

  Markham heard him.

  “Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”

  “Plenty, Mr. Markham.”

  The three of them went out.

  Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the diningroom door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.

  I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.*

  At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and down the hall.

  The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket, and joined Dinwiddie and me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain Hagedorn.

  The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door.

/>   “There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him in?”

  Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on recognizing the District Attorney, made Markham the recipient of his report.

  “I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around midnight, I guess it was, there was a big grey Cadillac standing in front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of fishing-tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on. When I heard of the crime this morning I reported the car to the station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”

  “Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the matter to Heath.

  “May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long would you say the car was here, officer?”

  “A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come back at twelve-thirty or thereabouts it was still here. But the next time I come by, it was gone.”

  “You saw nothing else? Nobody in the car, or anyone hanging around who might have been the owner?”

  “No, sir, I did not.”

  Several other questions of a similar nature were asked him; but nothing more could be learned, and he was dismissed.

  “Anyway,” remarked Heath, “the car story will be good stuff to hand the reporters.”

  Vance had sat through the questioning of McLaughlin with drowsy inattention,—I doubt if he even heard more than the first few words of the officer’s report,—and now, with a stifled yawn, he rose and, sauntering to the center-table, picked up one of the cigarette butts that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinizing the tip, he ripped the paper open with his thumb-nail, and held the exposed tobacco to his nose.

  Heath, who had been watching him gloweringly, leaned suddenly forward in his chair.