Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  Major Anthony Benson was naturally the principal person looked to for information, because of his intimate knowledge of his brother’s affairs; and it was in this connection that the District Attorney’s office did its chief functioning at the beginning of the case. Markham had lunched with Major Benson the day the crime was discovered, and though the latter had shown a willingness to co-operate—even to the detriment of his brother’s character—his suggestions were of little value. He explained to Markham that, though he knew most of his brother’s associates, he could not name anyone who would have any reason for committing such a crime, or anyone who, in his opinion, would be able to help in leading the police to the guilty person. He admitted frankly, however, that there was a side to his brother’s life with which he was unacquainted, and regretted that he was unable to suggest any specific way of ascertaining the hidden facts. But he intimated that his brother’s relations with women were of a somewhat unconventional nature; and he ventured the opinion that there was a bare possibility of a motive being found in that direction.

  Pursuant of the few indefinite and unsatisfactory suggestions of Major Benson, Markham had immediately put to work two good men from the Detective Division assigned to the District Attorney’s office, with instructions to confine their investigations to Benson’s women acquaintances so as not to appear in any way to be encroaching upon the activities of the Central Office men. Also, as a result of Vance’s apparent interest in the housekeeper at the time of the interrogation, he had sent a man to look into the woman’s antecedents and relationships.

  Mrs. Platz, it was learned, had been born in a small Pennsylvania town, of German parents both of whom were dead; and had been a widow for over sixteen years. Before coming to Benson, she had been with one family for twelve years, and had left the position only because her mistress had given up housekeeping and moved into a hotel. Her former employer, when questioned, said she thought there had been a daughter, but had never seen the child, and knew nothing of it. In these facts there was nothing to take hold of, and Markham had merely filed the report as a matter of form.

  Heath had instigated a city-wide search for the grey Cadillac, although he had little faith in its direct connection with the crime; and in this the newspapers helped considerably by the extensive advertising given the car. One curious fact developed that fired the police with the hope that the Cadillac might indeed hold some clue to the mystery. A street-cleaner, having read or heard about the fishing-tackle in the machine, reported the finding of two jointed fishing-rods, in good condition, at the side of one of the drives in Central Park near Columbus Circle. The question was: were these rods part of the equipment Patrolman McLaughlin had seen in the Cadillac? The owner of the car might conceivably have thrown them away in his flight; but, on the other hand, they might have been lost by someone else while driving through the park. No further information was forthcoming, and on the morning of the day following the discovery of the crime the case, so far as any definite progress toward a solution was concerned, had taken no perceptible forward step.

  That morning Vance had sent Currie out to buy him every available newspaper; and he had spent over an hour perusing the various accounts of the crime. It was unusual for him to glance at a newspaper, even casually, and I could not refrain from expressing my amazement at his sudden interest in a subject so entirely outside his normal routine.

  “No, Van old dear,” he explained languidly, “I am not becoming sentimental or even human, as that word is erroneously used to-day. I can not say with Terence, ‘Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto’,56 because I regard most things that are called human as decidedly alien to myself. But, y’ know, this little flurry in crime has proved rather int’restin’, or, as the magazine writers say, intriguing—beastly word! . . . Van, you really should read this precious interview with Sergeant Heath. He takes an entire column to say ‘I know nothing’. A priceless lad! I’m becoming pos’tively fond of him.”

  “It may be,” I suggested, “that Heath is keeping his true knowledge from the papers, as a bit of tactical diplomacy.”

  “No,” Vance returned, with a sad wag of the head; “no man has so little vanity that he would delib’rately reveal himself to the world as a creature with no per’ceptible powers of human reasoning—as he does in all these morning journals—for the mere sake of bringing one murderer to justice. That would be martyrdom gone mad.”

  “Markham, at any rate, may know or suspect something that hasn’t been revealed,” I said.

  Vance pondered a moment.

  “That’s not impossible,” he admitted. “He has kept himself modestly in the background in all this journalistic palaver. Suppose we look into the matter more thoroughly—eh, what?”

  Going to the telephone he called the District Attorney’s office, and I heard him make an appointment with Markham for lunch at the Stuyvesant Club.

  “What about that Nadelmann statuette at Stieglitz’s,”57 I asked, remembering the reason for my presence at Vance’s that morning.

  “I ain’t* in the mood for Greek simplifications to-day,” he answered, turning again to his newspapers.

  To say that I was surprised at his attitude is to express it mildly. In all my association with him I had never known him to forgo his enthusiasm for art in favor of any other divertisement; and heretofore anything pertaining to the law and its operations had failed to interest him. I realized, therefore, that something of an unusual nature was at work in his brain, and I refrained from further comment.

  Markham was a little late for the appointment at the Club, and Vance and I were already at our favorite corner table when he arrived.

  “Well, my good Lycurgus,” Vance greeted him, “aside from the fact that several new and significant clues have been unearthed and that the public may expect important developments in the very near future, and all that sort of tosh, how are things really going?”

  Markham smiled.

  “I see you have been reading the newspapers. What do you think of the accounts?”

  “Typical, no doubt,” replied Vance. “They carefully and painstakingly omit nothing but the essentials.”

  “Indeed?” Markham’s tone was jocular. “And what, may I ask, do you regard as the essentials of the case?”

  “In my foolish amateur way,” said Vance, “I looked upon dear Alvin’s toupee as a rather conspicuous essential, don’t y’ know.”

  “Benson, at any rate, regarded it in that light, I imagine. . . . Anything else?”

  “Well, there was the collar and the tie on the chiffonier.”

  “And,” added Markham chaffingly, “don’t overlook the false teeth in the tumbler.”

  “You’re pos’tively coruscatin’!” Vance exclaimed. “Yes, they, too, were an essential of the situation. And I’ll warrant the incomp’rable Heath didn’t even notice them. But the other Aristotles present were equally sketchy in their observations.”

  “You weren’t particularly impressed by the investigation yesterday, I take it,” said Markham.

  “On the contrary,” Vance assured him. “I was impressed to the point of stupefaction. The whole proceedings constituted a masterpiece of absurdity. Everything relevant was sublimely ignored. There were at least a dozen points de départ,58 all leading in the same direction, but not one of them apparently was even noticed by any of the officiating pourparleurs.59 Everybody was too busy at such silly occupations as looking for cigarette-ends and inspecting the ironwork at the windows.—Those grilles, by the way, were rather attractive—Florentine design.”

  Markham was both amused and ruffled.

  “One’s pretty safe with the police, Vance,” he said. “They get there eventually.”

  “I simply adore your trusting nature,” murmured Vance. “But confide in me: what do you know regarding Benson’s murderer?”

  Markham hesitated.

  “This is, of course, in confidence,” he said at length; “but this morning, right after you ’phoned, one of the
men I had put to work on the amatory end of Benson’s life, reported that he had found the woman who left her hand-bag and gloves at the house that night,—the initials on the handkerchief gave him the clue. And he dug up some interesting facts about her. As I suspected, she was Benson’s dinner companion that evening. She’s an actress—musical comedy, I believe. Muriel St. Clair by name.”

  “Most unfortunate,” breathed Vance. “I was hoping, y’ know, your myrmidons wouldn’t discover the lady. I haven’t the pleasure of her acquaintance, or I’d send her a note of commiseration. . . . Now, I presume, you’ll play the juge d’instruction60 and chivvy her most horribly, what?”

  “I shall certainly question her, if that’s what you mean.”

  Markham’s manner was preoccupied, and during the rest of the lunch we spoke but little.

  As we sat in the Club’s lounge-room later having our smoke, Major Benson, who had been standing dejectedly at a window close by, caught sight of Markham and came over to us. He was a full-faced man of about fifty, with grave kindly features and a sturdy, erect body.

  He greeted Vance and me with a casual bow, and turned at once to the District Attorney.

  “Markham, I’ve been thinking things over constantly since our lunch yesterday,” he said, “and there’s one other suggestion I think I might make. There’s a man named Leander Pfyfe who was very close to Alvin; and it’s possible he could give you some helpful information. His name didn’t occur to me yesterday, for he doesn’t live in the city; he’s on Long Island somewhere—Port Washington,61 I think.—It’s just an idea. The truth is, I can’t seem to figure out anything that makes sense in this terrible affair.”

  He drew a quick, resolute breath, as if to check some involuntary sign of emotion. It was evident that the man, for all his habitual passivity of nature, was deeply moved.

  “That’s a good suggestion, Major,” Markham said, making a notation on the back of a letter. “I’ll get after it immediately.”

  Vance, who, during this brief interchange, had been gazing unconcernedly out of the window, turned and addressed himself to the Major.

  “How about Colonel Ostrander? I’ve seen him several times in the company of your brother.”

  Major Benson made a slight gesture of deprecation.

  “Only an acquaintance. He’d be of no value.”

  Then he turned to Markham.

  “I don’t imagine it’s time even to hope that you’ve run across anything.”

  Markham took his cigar from his mouth, and turning it about in his fingers, contemplated it thoughtfully.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he remarked, after a moment. “I’ve managed to find out whom your brother dined with Thursday night; and I know that this person returned home with him shortly after midnight.” He paused as if deliberating the wisdom of saying more. Then: “The fact is, I don’t need a great deal more evidence than I’ve got already to go before the Grand Jury and ask for an indictment.”

  A look of surprised admiration flashed in the Major’s sombre face.

  “Thank God for that, Markham!” he said. Then, setting his heavy jaw, he placed his hand on the District Attorney’s shoulder. “Go the limit—for my sake!” he urged. “If you want me for anything, I’ll be here at the Club till late.”

  With this he turned and walked from the room.

  “It seems a bit cold-blooded to bother the Major with questions so soon after his brother’s death,” commented Markham. “Still, the world has got to go on.”

  Vance stifled a yawn.

  “Why—in Heaven’s name?” he murmured listlessly.

  52.Literally, “foolish lights,” referring to the intermittent lights seen in marshlands known as “will-o’-the-wisp,” used here figuratively.

  53.Such magazines included Town Topics: A Journal of Society, for which Willard Wright (S. S. Van Dine) had written. The magazines had an interesting method of extortion. An innocuous article about Mr. X would appear (naming names) next to a “blind” article about his scandalous activities, thus protecting the magazine from overt blackmail. Such articles could be suppressed by the subject’s purchasing “advertising” in the magazine.

  Town Topics (February 1919)

  54.As will be seen, Benson’s service must have taken place in mid-1917, and at the time of the murder, he was only recently returned to New York.

  * [Author’s note:] Even the famous Elwell case, which came several years later and bore certain points of similarity to the Benson case, created no greater sensation, despite the fact that Elwell was more widely known than Benson, and the persons involved were more prominent socially. Indeed, the Benson case was referred to several times in descriptions of the Elwell case; and one anti-administration paper regretted editorially that John F.-X. Markham was no longer District Attorney of New York.

  [Editor’s note: On June 11, 1920, J. B. Elwell was murdered in his locked house. The case has never been solved. The Elwell case is thought to be one of the inspirations for The Benson Murder Case. There are many similarities between the two (see in particular Chapter 4 of J. K. Van Dover’s Making the Detective Story American). Van Dine’s reference to it is a joke. See Foreword, p. xix. This author’s note is an important clue to dating the events of this case—“several years later” confirms that the events could not possibly have occurred in the mid-1920s, after the Elwell case, as various references to the “war” seem to suggest.]

  55.Clairvoyants—psychics—are people with the ability to obtain information through visions or supernatural powers. In the 1920s, belief in mediums such as Mina Crandon (“Margery”), whose abilities were investigated by the Society for Psychical Research and Scientific American, was widespread, and the Spiritualist movement had many prominent adherents, including its international spokesperson Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The popularity of the “scientific” religion was fed in part by the large number of deaths resulting from World War I; families were eager to be in touch with lost loved ones. Clairvoyants often offered their services to official investigators, a practice that continues today. For example, the television drama Medium (2005–2011) was based on the real psychic named Allison Dubois and her relationship with the Phoenix police department.

  56.Usually translated as “I am human, and I think that nothing of that which is human is alien to me.” From Terence’s play Heauton Timorumenos, written in the second century B.C.E.

  57.Elie Nadelman (1882–1946) was a Polish sculptor (and later prominent collector). Nadelman lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914, where he became associated with the avant-garde artists. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, he moved to New York, where he lived for the rest of his life. His early work was classical in style, though he later adopted Cubist ideas. Photographer’s Alfred Stieglitz’s “291” gallery, at 291 Fifth Avenue, which flourished from 1905 to 1917, exhibited Nadelman’s sculptures in 1915. After closing the gallery in 1917, Stieglitz began his relationship with Georgia O’Keefe. She moved to New York, and, essentially, she and Stieglitz were together until his death in 1946. It may well be that he retained some of Nadelman’s work after the closing of 291 and showed it privately to collectors.

  * [Author’s note:] Vance, who had lived many years in England, frequently said “ain’t”—a contraction which is regarded there more leniently than in this country. He also pronounced ate as if it were spelled et; and I can not remember his ever using the word “stomach” or “bug”, both of which are under the social ban in England.

  58.Starting points.

  59.Participants in a discussion or conference.

  60.A magistrate who interrogates the witnesses.

  61.A small hamlet in the northwest corner of Hampstead County.

  CHAPTER VI

  Vance Offers an Opinion

  (Saturday, June 15; 2 p.m.)

  We sat for a while smoking in silence, Vance gazing lazily out into Madison Square, Markham frowning deeply at the faded oil portrait of old Peter Stuyvesant that hung over the fireplace.
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  Presently Vance turned and contemplated the District Attorney with a faintly sardonic smile.

  “I say, Markham,” he drawled; “it has always been a source of amazement to me how easily you investigators of crime are misled by what you call clues. You find a footprint, or a parked automobile, or a monogrammed handkerchief, and then dash off on a wild chase with your eternal Ecce signum!62 ’Pon my word, it’s as if you chaps were all under the spell of shillin’ shockers. Won’t you ever learn that crimes can’t be solved by deductions based merely on material clues and circumst’ntial evidence?”63

  I think Markham was as much surprised as I at this sudden criticism; yet we both knew Vance well enough to realize that, despite his placid and almost flippant tone, there was a serious purpose behind his words.

  “Would you advocate ignoring all the tangible evidence of a crime?” asked Markham, a bit patronizingly.

  “Most emphatically,” Vance declared calmly. “It’s not only worthless but dangerous. . . . The great trouble with you chaps, d’ ye see, is that you approach every crime with a fixed and unshakable assumption that the criminal is either half-witted or a colossal bungler. I say, has it never by any chance occurred to you that if a detective could see a clue, the criminal would also have seen it, and would either have concealed it or disguised it, if he had not wanted it found? And have you never paused to consider that anyone clever enough to plan and execute a successful crime these days, is, ipso facto, clever enough to manufacture whatever clues suit his purpose? Your detective seems wholly unwilling to admit that the surface appearance of a crime may be delib’rately deceptive, or that the clues may have been planted for the def’nite purpose of misleading him.”64