Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Why not tell me now?” he asked.

  “Awf’lly sorry, y’ know,” apologized Vance; “but I’m going to the Philharmonic’s ‘special’ to-night. They’re playing César Franck’s D-minor, and Stransky’s147 temp’rament is em’nently suited to its diatonic sentimentalities. . . . You’d better come along, old man. Soothin’ to the nerves and all that.”

  “Not me!” grumbled Markham. “What I need is a brandy-and-soda.”

  He walked down with us to the taxicab.

  “Come at nine to-morrow,” said Vance, as we took our seats. “Let the office wait a bit. And don’t forget to ’phone Heath for those alibis.”

  Then, just as we started off, he leaned out of the car.

  “And I say, Markham: how tall would you say Mrs. Platz was?”

  * [Author’s note:] The book (or a part of it) has, I believe, been recently translated into English.

  [Editor’s note: The book, Decline of the West, was first published in German in 1918; the English translation was first published in 1926, before publication of The Benson Murder Case. This note was clearly added just before publication.]

  139.A convex molding separating two panels.

  140.A Gothic-style structure at 5 East 48th Street, since 1978 the home of the Swedish Seamen’s Church, it was built in 1920–21, and thus Vance’s remarks render a crushing blow to the 1918 dating of the events. We must ultimately conclude that either (a)(i) the dates given in the chapter headings and (ii) the mention that the Elwell case occurred a few years after the Benson case are fictions or (b) this incident did not occur and was inserted long after the events by Van Dine. In light of the numerous references to the war and the tight time frame in which Major Benson’s and Captain Leacock’s French service would have had to occur in order to place the events in 1918, it seems more likely that the case actually occurred some time in the early 1920s and—for reasons unknown—other fictional date references were scattered carelessly throughout Van Dine’s account of the event.

  New York Bible Society Building.

  141.Vance paraphrases Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1842 poem “Lady Clara Vere de Vere”:

  “Kind hearts are more than coronets, / And simple faith than Norman blood.” Lady Vere de Vere became a stereotype of the English nobility.

  142.A short, broad skull.

  143.Neither projecting nor receding, making the face nearly vertical.

  144.Medium-width.

  145.The so-called satyr ear has an abnormally small upper portion; when the lobe is also underdeveloped, it is called the “devil ear.” “Darwin’s point” is on the inside of the earlobe. It was first described by Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (where he called it the “Woolnerian tip,” after British sculptor Thomas Woolner, who incorporated it in his work) and is cited by Darwin as a vestigial feature proving common ancestry among primates. It is present in about 10 percent of the population.

  146.In England, judges were in the practice of writing the adjudicated sentence in the margin of the calendar. When the sentence was capital, the Latin verdict “suspendatur per collum” (“hang by the neck”), abbreviated as sus. per coll., was entered.

  147.Josef Stránský (1872–1936) conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923. César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (1822–1890), whose ideas about “cyclic” music had a strong influence on Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, is remembered today almost exclusively for his Symphony in D Minor.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Vance Outlines a Theory

  (Thursday, June 20; 9 a.m.)

  Markham came to Vance’s apartment at promptly nine o’clock the next morning. He was in bad humor.

  “Now, see here, Vance,” he said, as soon as he was seated at the table; “I want to know what was the meaning of your parting words last night.”

  “Eat your melon, old dear,” said Vance. “It comes from northern Brazil, and is very delicious. But don’t devitalize its flavor with pepper or salt. An amazin’ practice, that,—though not as amazin’ as stuffing a melon with ice-cream. The American does the most dumbfoundin’ things with ice-cream. He puts it on pie; he puts it in soda-water; he encases it in hard chocolate like a bon-bon; he puts it between sweet biscuits and calls the result an ice-cream sandwich; he even uses it instead of whipped cream in a Charlotte Russe. . . .”

  “What I want to know—” began Markham; but Vance did not permit him to finish.

  “It’s surprisin’, y’ know, the erroneous ideas people have about melons. There are only two species—the muskmelon and the watermelon. All breakfast melons—like cantaloups, citrons, nutmegs, Cassabas, and Honeydews—are varieties of the muskmelon. But people have the notion, d’ ye see, that cantaloup is a generic term. Philadelphians call all melons cantaloups; whereas this type of muskmelon was first cultivated in Cantalupo, Italy. . . .”

  “Very interesting,” said Markham, with only partly disguised impatience. “Did you intend by your remark last night—”

  “And after the melon, Currie has prepared a special dish for you. It’s my own gustat’ry chefd’œuvre—with Currie’s collaboration, of course. I’ve spent months on its conception—composing and organizing it, so to speak. I haven’t named it yet,—perhaps you can suggest a fitting appellation. . . . To achieve this dish, one first chops up a hard-boiled egg and mixes it with grated Port du Salut cheese, adding a soupçon of tarragon. This paste is then enclosed in a filet of white perch—like a French pancake. It is tied with silk, rolled in a specially prepared almond batter, and cooked in sweet butter.—That, of course, is the barest outline of its manufacture, with all the truly exquisite details omitted.”

  “It sounds appetizing.” Markham’s tone was devoid of enthusiasm. “But I didn’t come here for a cooking lesson.”

  “Y’ know, you underestimate the importance of your ventral pleasures,” pursued Vance. “Eating is the one infallible guide to a people’s intellectual advancement, as well as the inev’table gauge of the individual’s temp’rament. The savage cooked and ate like a savage. In the early days of the human race, mankind was cursed with one vast epidemic of indigestion. There’s where his devils and demons and ideas of hell came from: they were the nightmares of his dyspepsia. Then, as man began to master the technique of cooking, he became civilized; and when he achieved the highest pinnacles of the culin’ry art, he also achieved the highest pinnacles of cultural and intellectual glory. When the art of the gourmet retrogressed, so did man. The tasteless, standardized cookery of America is typical of our decadence. A perfectly blended soup, Markham, is more ennoblin’ than Beethoven’s C-minor Symphony. . . .”

  Markham listened stolidly to Vance’s chatter during breakfast. He made several attempts to bring up the subject of the crime, but Vance glibly ignored each essay. It was not until Currie had cleared away the dishes that he referred to the object of Markham’s visit.

  “Did you bring the alibi reports?” was his first question.

  Markham nodded.

  “And it took me two hours to find Heath after you’d gone last night.”

  “Sad,” breathed Vance.

  He went to the desk, and took a closely written double sheet of foolscap from one of the compartments.

  “I wish you’d glance this over, and give me your learned opinion,” he said, handing the paper to Markham. “I prepared it last night after the concert.”

  I later took possession of the document, and filed it with my other notes and papers pertaining to the Benson case. The following is a verbatim copy:

  HYPOTHESIS

  Mrs. Anna Platz shot and killed Alvin Benson on the night of June 13th.

  PLACE

  She lived in the house, and admitted being there at the time the shot was fired.

  OPPORTUNITY

  She was alone in the house with Benson.

  All the windows were either barred or locked on the inside. The front door was locked. There was no other means of ingress.

  Her presence i
n the living-room was natural: she might have entered ostensibly to ask Benson a domestic question.

  Her standing directly in front of him would not necessarily have caused him to look up. Hence, his reading attitude.

  Who else could have come so close to him for the purpose of shooting him, without attracting his attention?

  He would not have cared how he appeared before his housekeeper. He had become accustomed to being seen by her without his teeth and toupee and in négligé condition.

  Living in the house, she was able to choose a propitious moment for the crime.

  TIME

  She waited up for him. Despite her denial, he might have told her when he would return.

  When he came in alone and changed to his smokingjacket, she knew he was not expecting any late visitors.

  She chose a time shortly after his return because it would appear that he had brought someone home with him, and that this other person had killed him.

  MEANS

  She used Benson’s own gun. Benson undoubtedly had more than one; for he would have been more likely to keep a gun in his bed-room than in his living-room; and since a Smith and Wesson was found in the living-room, there probably was another in the bed-room.

  Being his housekeeper, she knew of the gun upstairs. After he had gone down to the living-room to read, she secured it, and took it with her, concealed under her apron.

  She threw the gun away or hid it after the shooting. She had all night in which to dispose of it.

  She was frightened when asked what fire-arms Benson kept about the house, for she was not sure whether or not we knew of the gun in the bed-room.

  MOTIVE

  She took the position of housekeeper because she feared Benson’s conduct toward her daughter. She always listened when her daughter came to his house at night to work.

  Recently she discovered that Benson had dishonorable intentions, and believed her daughter to be in imminent danger.

  A mother who would sacrifice herself for her daughter’s future, as she has done, would not hesitate at killing to save her.

  And: there are the jewels. She has them hidden and is keeping them for her daughter. Would Benson have gone out and left them on the table? And if he had put them away, who but she, familiar with the house and having plenty of time, could have found them?

  CONDUCT

  She lied about St. Clair’s coming to tea, explaining later that she knew St. Clair could not have had anything to do with the crime. Was this feminine intuition? No. She could know St. Clair was innocent only because she herself was guilty. She was too motherly to want an innocent person suspected.

  She was markedly frightened yesterday when her daughter’s name was mentioned, because she feared the discovery of the relationship might reveal her motive for shooting Benson.

  She admitted hearing the shot, because, if she had denied it, a test might have proved that a shot in the living-room would have sounded loudly in her room; and this would have aroused suspicion against her. Does a person, when awakened, turn on the lights and determine the exact hour? And if she had heard a report which sounded like a shot being fired in the house, would she not have investigated, or given an alarm?

  When first interviewed, she showed plainly she disliked Benson.

  Her apprehension has been pronounced each time she has been questioned.

  She is the hard-headed, shrewd, determined German type, who could both plan and perform such a crime.

  HEIGHT

  She is about five feet, ten inches tall—the demonstrated height of the murderer.

  Markham read this précis through several times,—he was fully fifteen minutes at the task,—and when he had finished he sat silent for ten minutes more. Then he rose and walked up and down the room.

  “Not a fancy legal document, that,” remarked Vance. “But I think even a Grand Juror could understand it. You, of course, can rearrange and elab’rate it, and bedeck it with innum’rable meaningless phrases and recondite legal idioms.”

  Markham did not answer at once. He paused by the French windows and looked down into the street. Then he said:

  “Yes, I think you’ve made out a case. . . . Extraordinary! I’ve wondered from the first what you were getting at; and your questioning of Platz yesterday impressed me as pointless. I’ll admit it never occurred to me to suspect her. Benson must have given her good cause.”

  He turned and came slowly toward us, his head down, his hands behind him.

  “I don’t like the idea of arresting her. . . . Funny I never thought of her in connection with it.”

  He stopped in front of Vance.

  “And you yourself didn’t think of her at first, despite your boast that you knew who did it after you’d been in Benson’s house five minutes.”

  Vance smiled mirthfully, and sprawled in his chair.

  Markham became indignant.

  “Damn it! You told me the next day that no woman could have done it, no matter what evidence, was adduced, and harangued me about art and psychology and God knows what.”

  “Quite right,” murmured Vance, still smiling. “No woman did it.”

  “No woman did it!” Markham’s gorge was rising rapidly.

  “Oh, dear no!”

  He pointed to the sheet of paper in Markham’s hand.

  “That’s just a bit of spoofing, don’t y’ know. . . . Poor old Mrs. Platz!—she’s as innocent as a lamb.”

  Markham threw the paper on the table and sat down. I had never seen him so furious; but he controlled himself admirably.

  “Y’ see, my dear old bean,” explained Vance, in his unemotional drawl, “I had an irresistible longing to demonstrate to you how utterly silly your circumst’ntial and material evidence is. I’m rather proud, y’ know, of my case against Mrs. Platz. I’m sure you could convict her on the strength of it. But, like the whole theory of your exalted law, it’s wholly specious and erroneous. . . . Circumst’ntial evidence, Markham, is the utt’rest tommyrot imag’nable. Its theory is not unlike that of our presentday democracy. The democratic theory is that if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls you produce intelligence; and the theory of circumst’ntial evidence is that if you accumulate a sufficient number of weak links you produce a strong chain.”

  “Did you get me here this morning,” demanded Markham coldly, “to give me a dissertation on legal theory?”

  “Oh, no,” Vance blithely assured him. “But I simply must prepare you for the acceptance of my revelation; for I haven’t a scrap of material or circumst’ntial evidence against the guilty man. And yet, Markham, I know he’s guilty as well as I know you’re sitting in that chair planning how you can torture and kill me without being punished.”

  “If you have no evidence, how did you arrive at your conclusion?” Markham’s tone was vindictive.

  “Solely by psychological analysis—by what might be called the science of personal possibilities. A man’s psychological nature is as clear a brand to one who can read it as was Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter. . . . I never read Hawthorne, by the bye. I can’t abide the New England temp’rament.”

  Markham set his jaw, and gave Vance a look of arctic ferocity.

  “You expect me to go into court, I suppose, leading your victim by the arm, and say to the Judge: ‘Here’s the man that shot Alvin Benson. I have no evidence against him, but I want you to sentence him to death, because my brilliant and sagacious friend, Mr. Philo Vance, the inventor of stuffed perch, says this man has a wicked nature.’”

  Vance gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  “I sha’n’t wither away with grief if you don’t even arrest the guilty man. But I thought it no more than humane to tell you who he was, if only to stop you from chivvying all these innocent people.”

  “All right—tell me; and let me get on about my business.”

  I don’t believe there was any longer a question in Markham’s mind that Vance actually knew who had killed Benson. But it was not until considerabl
y later in the morning that he fully understood why Vance had kept him for days upon tenter-hooks. When, at last, he did understand it, he forgave Vance; but at the moment he was angered to the limit of his control.

  “There are one or two things that must be done before I can reveal the gentleman’s name,” Vance told him. “First, let me have a peep at those alibis.”

  Markham took from his pocket a sheaf of typewritten pages and passed them over.

  Vance adjusted his monocle,148 and read through them carefully. Then he stepped out of the room; and I heard him telephoning. When he returned he re-read the reports. One in particular he lingered over, as if weighing its possibilities.

  “There’s a chance, y’ know,” he murmured at length, gazing indecisively into the fireplace.

  He glanced at the report again.

  “I see here,” he said, “that Colonel Ostrander, accompanied by a Bronx alderman named Moriarty, attended the Midnight Follies at the Piccadilly Theatre in Forty-seventh Street on the night of the thirteenth, arriving there a little before twelve and remaining through the performance, which was over about half past two a.m. . . . Are you acquainted with this particular alderman?”

  Markham’s eyes lifted sharply to the other’s face.

  “I’ve met Mr. Moriarty. What about him?” I thought I detected a note of suppressed excitement in his voice.

  “Where do Bronx aldermen loll about in the forenoons?” asked Vance.

  “At home, I should say. Or possibly at the Samoset Club. . . . Sometimes they have business at City Hall.”

  “My word!—such unseemly activity for a politician! . . . Would you mind ascertaining if Mr. Moriarty is at home or at his club. If it’s not too much bother, I’d like to have a brief word with him.”

  Markham gave Vance a penetrating gaze. Then, without a word, he went to the telephone in the den.

  “Mr. Moriarty was at home, about to leave for City Hall,” he announced, on returning. “I asked him to drop by here on his way down town.”