Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “I’m afraid,” Markham pointed out, with an air of indulgent irony, “that we’d convict very few criminals if we were to ignore all indicatory evidence, cogent circumstances and irresistible inferences. . . . As a rule, you know, crimes are not witnessed by outsiders.”

  “That’s your fundamental error, don’t y’ know,” Vance observed impassively. “Every crime is witnessed by outsiders, just as is every work of art. The fact that no one sees the criminal, or the artist, actu’lly at work, is wholly incons’quential. The modern investigator of crime would doubtless refuse to believe that Rubens painted the Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral at Antwerp if there was sufficient circumst’ntial evidence to indicate that he had been away on diplomatic business, for instance, at the time it was painted. And yet, my dear fellow, such a conclusion would be prepost’rous. Even if the inf’rences to the contr’ry were so irresistible as to be legally overpowering, the picture itself would prove conclusively that Rubens did paint it. Why? For the simple reason, d’ ye see, that no one but Rubens could have painted it. It bears the indelible imprint of his personality and genius—and his alone.”

  “I’m not an æsthetician,” Markham reminded him, a trifle testily. “I’m merely a practical lawyer, and when it comes to determining the authorship of a crime, I prefer tangible evidence to metaphysical hypotheses.”

  “Your pref’rence, my dear fellow,” Vance returned blandly, “will inev’tably involve you in all manner of embarrassing errors.”

  He slowly lit another cigarette, and blew a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling.

  “Consider, for example, your conclusions in the present murder case,” he went on, in his emotionless drawl. “You are laboring under the grave misconception that you know the person who prob’bly killed the unspeakable Benson. You admitted as much to the Major; and you told him you had nearly enough evidence to ask for an indictment. No doubt, you do possess a number of what the learned Solons of to-day regard as convincing clues. But the truth is, don’t y’ know, you haven’t your eye on the guilty person at all. You’re about to bedevil some poor girl who had nothing whatever to do with the crime.”

  Markham swung about sharply.

  “So!” he retorted. “I’m about to bedevil an innocent person, eh? Since my assistants and I are the only ones who happen to know what evidence we hold against her, perhaps you will explain by what occult process you acquired your knowledge of this person’s innocence.”

  “It’s quite simple, y’ know,” Vance replied, with a quizzical twitch of the lips. “You haven’t your eye on the murderer for the reason that the person who committed this particular crime was sufficiently shrewd and perspicacious to see to it that no evidence which you or the police were likely to find, would even remotely indicate his guilt.”

  He had spoken with the easy assurance of one who enunciates an obvious fact—a fact which permits of no argument.

  Markham gave a disdainful laugh.

  “No law-breaker,” he asserted oracularly, “is shrewd enough to see all contingencies. Even the most trivial event has so many intimately related and serrated points of contact with other events which precede and follow, that it is a known fact that every criminal—however long and carefully he may plan—leaves some loose end to his preparations, which in the end betrays him.”

  “A known fact?” Vance repeated. “No, my dear fellow—merely a conventional superstition, based on the childish idea of an implacable, avenging Nemesis. I can see how this esoteric notion of the inev’tability of divine punishment would appeal to the popular imagination, like fortune-telling and Ouija boards, don’t y’ know; but—my word!—it desolates me to think that you, old chap, would give credence to such mystical moonshine.”

  “Don’t let it spoil your entire day,” said Markham acridly.

  “Regard the unsolved, or successful, crimes that are taking place every day,” Vance continued, disregarding the other’s irony, “—crimes which completely baffle the best detectives in the business, what? The fact is, the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by stupid people. That’s why, whenever a man of even mod’rate sagacity decides to commit a crime, he accomplishes it with but little diff’culty, and fortified with the pos’tive assurance of his immunity to discovery.”

  “Undetected crimes,” scornfully submitted Markham, “result, in the main, from official bad luck—not from superior criminal cleverness.”

  “Bad luck”—Vance’s voice was almost dulcet—“is merely a defensive and self-consoling synonym for inefficiency. A man with ingenuity and brains is not harassed by bad luck. . . . No, Markham old dear; unsolved crimes are simply crimes which have been intelligently planned and executed. And, d’ ye see, it happens that the Benson murder falls into that categ’ry. Therefore, when, after a few hours’ investigation, you say you’re pretty sure who committed it, you must pardon me if I take issue with you.”

  He paused and took a few meditative puffs on his cigarette.

  “The factitious and casuistic methods of deduction you chaps pursue are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now plotting to take away.”

  Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.

  “It so happens—and I’m speaking ex cathedra65—” he proclaimed defiantly, “that I come pretty near having the goods on your ‘unfortunate young lady’.”

  Vance was unmoved.

  “And yet, y’ know,” he observed drily, “no woman could possibly have done it.”

  I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost spluttered.

  “A woman couldn’t have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?”

  “Quite so,” Vance rejoined placidly: “not if she herself swore to it and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather pompously, incontrovertible evidence.”

  “Ah!” There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham’s tone. “I am to understand then that you even regard confessions as valueless?”

  “Yes, my dear Justinian,” the other responded, with an air of complacency; “I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they are worse than valueless—they’re downright misleading. The fact that occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman’s prepost’rously overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable.”

  Markham grunted disdainfully.

  “Why should any person confess something to his detriment unless he felt that the truth had been found out, or was likely to be found out?”

  “’Pon my word, Markham, you astound me! Permit me to murmur, privatissime et gratis,66 into your innocent ear that there are many other presumable motives for confessing. A confession may be the result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry, or what the psycho-analysts call the inferiority complex, or delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a perverted egotism, or sheer vanity, or any other of a hundred causes. Confessions are the most treach’rous and unreliable of all forms of evidence; and even the silly and unscientific law repudiates them in murder cases unless substantiated by other evidence.”67

  “You are eloquent; you wring me,” said Markham. “But if the law threw out all confessions and ignored all material clues, as you appear to advise, then society might as well close down all its courts and scrap all its jails.”

  “A typical non sequitur of legal logic,” Vance replied.

  “But how would you convict the guilty, may I ask?”

  “There is one infallible method of determining human guilt and responsibility,” Vance explained; “but as yet the police are as blissfully unaware of its possibilities as they are ignorant of its operations. The truth can be learned only by an analysis of the psychological factors of a crime, and an application of them to the individual. The only real clues are psychological—not material. Your truly profound art expert, for instance, do
es not judge and authenticate pictures by an inspection of the underpainting and a chemical analysis of the pigments, but by studying the creative personality revealed in the picture’s conception and execution. He asks himself: Does this work of art embody the qualities of form and technique and mental attitude that made up the genius—namely, the personality—of Rubens, or Michelangelo, or Veronese, or Titian, or Tintoretto, or whoever may be the artist to whom the work has been tentatively credited.”

  “My mind is, I fear,” Markham confessed, “still sufficiently primitive to be impressed by vulgar facts; and in the present instance—unfortunately for your most original and artistic analogy—I possess quite an array of such facts, all of which indicate that a certain young woman is the—shall we say?—creator of the criminal opus entitled The Murder of Alvin Benson.”

  Vance shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.

  “Would you mind telling me—in confidence, of course—what these facts are?”

  “Certainly not,” Markham acceded. “Imprimis:68 the lady was in the house at the time the shot was fired.”

  Vance affected incredibility.

  “Eh—my word! She was actu’lly there? Most extr’ordin’ry!”

  “The evidence of her presence is unassailable,” pursued Markham. “As you know, the gloves she wore at dinner, and the hand-bag she carried with her, were both found on the mantel in Benson’s living-room.”

  “Oh!” murmured Vance, with a faintly deprecating smile. “It was not the lady, then, but her gloves and bag which were present,—a minute and unimportant distinction, no doubt, from the legal point of view. . . . Still,” he added, “I deplore the inability of my layman’s untutored mind to accept the two conditions as identical. My trousers are at the dry-cleaners; therefore, I am at the dry-cleaners, what?”

  Markham turned on him with considerable warmth.

  “Does it mean nothing in the way of evidence, even to your layman’s mind, that a woman’s intimate and necessary articles, which she has carried throughout the evening, are found in her escort’s quarters the following morning?”

  “In admitting that it does not,” Vance acknowledged quietly, “I no doubt expose a legal perception lamentably inefficient.”

  “But since the lady certainly wouldn’t have carried these particular objects during the afternoon, and since she couldn’t have called at the house that evening during Benson’s absence without the housekeeper knowing it, how, may one ask, did these articles happen to be there the next morning if she herself did not take them there late that night?”

  “’Pon my word, I haven’t the slightest notion,” Vance rejoined. “The lady herself could doubtless appease your curiosity. But there are any number of possible explanations, y’ know. Our departed Chesterfield might have brought them home in his coat pocket,—women are eternally handing men all manner of gewgaws and bundles to carry for ’em, with the cooing request: ‘Can you put this in your pocket for me?’ . . . Then again, there is the possibility that the real murderer secured them in some way, and placed them on the mantel delib’rately to mislead the polizei. Women, don’t y’ know, never put their belongings in such neat, out-of-the-way places as mantels and hat-racks. They invariably throw them down on your fav’rite chair or your center-table.”

  “And, I suppose,” Markham interjected, “Benson also brought the lady’s cigarette butts home in his pocket?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” returned Vance equably; “though I sha’n’t accuse him of it in this instance. . . . The cigarette butts may, y’ know, be evidence of a previous conversazione.”

  “Even your despised Heath,” Markham informed him, “had sufficient intelligence to ascertain from the housekeeper that she sweeps out the grate every morning.”

  Vance sighed admiringly.

  “You’re so thorough, aren’t you? . . . But, I say, that can’t be, by any chance, your only evidence against the lady?”

  “By no means,” Markham assured him. “But, despite your superior distrust, it’s good corroboratory evidence nevertheless.”

  “I dare say,” Vance agreed, “—seeing with what frequency innocent persons are condemned in our courts. . . . But tell me more.”

  Markham proceeded with an air of quiet selfassurance.

  “My man learned, first, that Benson dined alone with this woman at the Marseilles, a little bohemian restaurant in West Fortieth Street;69 secondly, that they quarrelled; and thirdly, that they departed at midnight, entering a taxicab together. . . . Now, the murder was committed at twelve-thirty; but since the lady lives on Riverside Drive, in the Eighties, Benson couldn’t possibly have accompanied her home—which obviously he would have done had he not taken her to his own house—and returned by the time the shot was fired. But we have further proof pointing to her being at Benson’s. My man learned, at the woman’s apartment-house, that actually she did not get home until shortly after one. Moreover, she was without her gloves and hand-bag, and had to be let in to her rooms with a pass-key, because, as she explained, she had lost hers. As you remember, we found the key in her bag. And—to clinch the whole matter—the smoked cigarettes in the grate corresponded to the one you found in her case.”

  Markham paused to relight his cigar.

  “So much for that particular evening,” he resumed. “As soon as I learned the woman’s identity this morning, I put two more men to work on her private life. Just as I was leaving the office this noon the men ’phoned in their reports. They had learned that the woman has a fiancé, a chap named Leacock, who was a captain in the army, and who would be likely to own just such a gun as Benson was killed with. Furthermore, this Captain Leacock lunched with the woman the day of the murder and also called on her at her apartment the morning after.”

  Markham leaned slightly forward, and his next words were emphasized by the tapping of his fingers on the arm of the chair.

  “As you see, we have the motive, the opportunity, and the means. . . . Perhaps you will tell me now that I possess no incriminating evidence.”

  “My dear Markham,” Vance affirmed calmly, “you haven’t brought out a single point which could not easily be explained away by any bright school-boy.” He shook his head lugubriously. “And on such evidence people are deprived of their life and liberty! ’Pon my word, you alarm me. I tremble for my personal safety.”

  Markham was nettled.

  “Would you be so good as to point out, from your dizzy pinnacle of sapience, the errors in my reasoning?”

  “As far as I can see,” returned Vance evenly, “your particularization concerning the lady is innocent of reasoning. You’ve simply taken several unaffined facts, and jumped to a false conclusion. I happen to know the conclusion is false because all the psychological indications of the crime contradict it—that is to say, the only real evidence in the case points unmistakably in another direction.”

  He made a gesture of emphasis, and his tone assumed an unwonted gravity.

  “And if you arrest any woman for killing Alvin Benson, you will simply be adding another crime—a crime of delib’rate and unpardonable stupidity—to the one already committed. And between shooting a bounder like Benson and ruining an innocent woman’s reputation, I’m inclined to regard the latter as the more reprehensible.”

  I could see a flash of resentment leap into Markham’s eyes; but he did not take offense. Remember: these two men were close friends; and, for all their divergency of nature, they understood and respected each other. Their frankness—severe and even mordant at times—was, indeed, a result of that respect.

  There was a moment’s silence; then Markham forced a smile.

  “You fill me with misgivings,” he averred mockingly; but, despite the lightness of his tone, I felt that he was half in earnest. “However, I hadn’t exactly planned to arrest the lady just yet.”

  “You reveal commendable restraint,” Vance complimented him. “But I’m sure you’ve already arranged to ballyrag70 the lady and perhaps trick her
into one or two of those contradictions so dear to every lawyer’s heart,—just as if any nervous or high-strung person could help indulging in apparent contradictions while being cross-questioned as a suspect in a crime they had nothing to do with. . . . To ‘put ’em on the grill’—a most accurate designation. So reminiscent of burning people at the stake, what?”

  “Well, I’m most certainly going to question her,” replied Markham firmly, glancing at his watch. “And one of my men is escorting her to the office in half an hour; so I must break up this most delightful and edifying chat.”

  “You really expect to learn something incriminating by interrogating her?” asked Vance. “Y’ know, I’d jolly well like to witness your humiliation. But I presume your heckling of suspects is a part of the legal arcana.”

  Markham had risen and turned toward the door, but at Vance’s words he paused and appeared to deliberate.

  “I can’t see any particular objection to your being present,” he said, “if you really care to come.”

  I think he had an idea that the humiliation of which the other had spoken would prove to be Vance’s own; and soon we were in a taxicab headed for the Criminal Courts Building.71

  62.“Here is the sign (proof)!”

  63.“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” said Sherlock Holmes, in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.” And yet, he quoted with approval from Thoreau: “Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

  64.Vance is undoubtedly right about the kind of stories that appear in mystery fiction and crimes perpetrated by the “better” class of criminals, including those who studied the tales of Sherlock Holmes and the vast outpouring of mystery fiction after the success of Holmes. Fortunately for law enforcement, however, most criminals are not drawn from the class of mystery readers, and crime-scene evidence has been an essential tool of law enforcement for the great majority of crimes.