The Benson Murder Case

Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front-door bell, ushered the District Attorney into the living-room.

“By all that’s holy!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. “New York’s leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!”

“And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it,” Vance replied.

It was evident, however, that the District Attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered.

“Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I’m in a great hurry, and merely dropped by to keep my promise.⁠ ⁠… The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered.”

Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly.

“Really, now,” he drawled. “How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that’s no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie’s incomp’rable coffee.” And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.

Markham hesitated a second or two.

“Oh, well. A couple of minutes won’t make any difference. But only a gulp.” And he sank into a chair facing us.

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! ’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?”

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?

I think we were all taken a little aback at the spectacle presented by this young woman as she came slowly into the room with a firm graceful step, and with her head held slightly to one side in an attitude of supercilious inquiry. She was small and strikingly pretty, although “pretty” is not exactly the word with which to describe her. She possessed that faintly exotic beauty that we find in the portraits of the Carracci, who sweetened the severity of Leonardo and made it at once intimate and decadent. Her eyes were dark and widely spaced; her nose was delicate and straight, and her forehead broad. Her full sensuous lips were almost sculpturesque in their linear precision, and her mouth wore an enigmatic smile, or hint of a smile. Her rounded firm chin was a bit heavy when examined apart from the other features, but not in the ensemble. There was poise and a certain strength of character in her bearing; but one sensed the potentialities of powerful emotions beneath her exterior calm. Her clothes harmonized with her personality: they were quiet and apparently in the conventional style, but a touch of color and originality here and there conferred on them a fascinating distinction.

Markham rose and, bowing with formal courtesy, indicated a comfortable upholstered chair directly in front of his desk. With a barely perceptible nod, she glanced at the chair, and then seated herself in a straight armless chair standing next to it.

“You won’t mind, I’m sure,” she said, “if I choose my own chair for the inquisition.”

When the housekeeper entered she appeared even more composed than when Markham had first questioned her. There was something at once sullen and indomitable in her manner, and she looked at me with a slightly challenging expression. Markham merely nodded to her, but Vance stood up and indicated a low tufted Morris chair near the fireplace, facing the front windows. She sat down on the edge of it, resting her elbows on its broad arms.

“I have some questions to ask you, Mrs. Platz,” Vance began, fixing her sharply with his gaze; “and it will be best for everyone if you tell the whole truth. You understand me⁠—eh, what?”

The easygoing, half-whimsical manner he had taken with Markham had disappeared. He stood before the woman, stern and implacable.

At his words she lifted her head. Her face was blank, but her mouth was set stubbornly, and a smouldering look in her eyes told of a suppressed anxiety.

Vance waited a moment and then went on, enunciating each word with distinctness.

“At what time, on the day Mr. Benson was killed, did the lady call here?”

The woman’s gaze did not falter, but the pupils of her eyes dilated.

“There was nobody here.”

“Oh, yes, there was, Mrs. Platz.” Vance’s tone was assured. “What time did she call?”

“Nobody was here, I tell you,” she persisted.

Vance lit a cigarette with interminable deliberation, his eyes resting steadily on hers. He smoked placidly until her gaze dropped. Then he stepped nearer to her, and said firmly:

At that moment Vance did an amazing thing. He walked swiftly to the District Attorney’s desk and, snatching the receiver out of Markham’s hand, clamped it down on the hook. Then he placed the telephone to one side, and laid both hands on the other’s shoulders. Markham was too astonished and bewildered to protest; and before he could recover himself, Vance said in a low, firm voice, which was all the more impelling because of its softness:

“I’m not going to let you jail Leacock⁠—that’s what I came here for this morning. You’re not going to order his arrest as long as I’m in this office and can prevent it by any means whatever. There’s only one way you can accomplish this act of unmitigated folly, and that’s by summoning your policemen and having me forcibly ejected. And I advise you to call a goodly number of ’em, because I’ll give ’em the battle of their bellicose lives!”

The incredible part of this threat was that Vance meant it literally. And Markham knew he meant it.

“If you do call your henchmen,” he went on, “you’ll be the laughing stock of the city inside of a week; for, by that time, it’ll be known who really did shoot Benson. And I’ll be a popular hero and a martyr⁠—God save the mark!⁠—for defying the District Attorney and offering up my sweet freedom on the altar of truth and justice and that sort of thing.⁠ ⁠…”