The Benson Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “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 centre-table, picked up one of the cigarette butts that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinising 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.

  “What are you doing there?” he demanded, in a tone of surly truculence.

  Vance lifted his eyes in decorous astonishment.

  “Merely smelling of the tobacco,” he replied, with condescending unconcern. “It’s rather mild, y’know, but delicately blended.”

  The muscles in Heath’s cheeks worked angrily. “Well, you’d better put it down, sir,” he advised. Then he looked Vance up and down. “Tobacco expert?” he asked, with ill-disguised sarcasm.

  “Oh, dear no.” Vance’s voice was dulcet. “My speciality is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties.”

  Markham interposed diplomatically.

  “You really shouldn’t touch anything around here, Vance, at this stage of the game. You never know what’ll turn out to be important. Those cigarette stubs may quite possibly be significant evidence.”

  “Evidence?” repeated Vance sweetly. “My word! You don’t say, really! Most amusin’!”

  Markham was plainly annoyed; and Heath was boiling inwardly, but made no further comment: he even forced a mirthless smile. He evidently felt that he had been a little too abrupt with this friend of the District Attorney, however much the friend might have deserved being reprimanded.

  Heath, however, was no sycophant in the presence of his superiors. He knew his worth and lived up to it with his whole energy, discharging the tasks to which he was assigned with a dogged indifference to his own political well-being. This stubbornness of spirit, and the solidity of character it implied, were respected and valued by the men over him.

  He was a large, powerful man, but agile and graceful in his movements, like a highly trained boxer. He had hard, blue eyes, remarkably bright and penetrating, a small nose, a broad oval chin, and a stern, straight mouth with lips that appeared always compressed. His hair, which, though he was well along in his forties, was without a trace of greyness, was cropped about the edges, and stood upright in a short bristly pompadour. His voice had an aggressive resonance, but he rarely blustered. In many ways he accorded with the conventional notion of what a detective is like. But there was something more to the man’s personality, an added capability and strength, as it were; and as I sat watching him that morning, I felt myself unconsciously admiring him, despite his very obvious limitations.

  “What’s the exact situation, Sergeant?” Markham asked. “Dinwiddie gave me only the barest facts.”

  Heath cleared his throat.

  “We got the word a little before seven. Benson’s housekeeper, a Mrs. Platz, called up the local station and reported that she’d found him dead, and asked that somebody be sent over at once. The message, of course, was relayed to Headquarters. I wasn’t there at the time, but Burke and Emery were on duty, and after notifying Inspector Moran, they came on up here. Several of the men from the local station were already on the job doing the usual nosing about. When the Inspector had got here and looked the situation over, he telephoned me to hurry along. When I arrived the local men had gone, and three more men from the Homicide Bureau had joined Burke and Emery. The Inspector also ’phoned Captain Hagedorn—he thought the case big enough to call him in on it at once—and the Captain had just got here when you arrived. Mr. Dinwiddie had come in right after the Inspector, and ’phoned you at once. Chief Inspector O’Brien came along a little ahead of me. I questioned the Platz woman right off; and my men were looking the place over when you showed up.”

  “Where’s this Mrs. Platz now?” asked Markham.

  “Upstairs, being watched by one of the local men. She lives in the house.”

  “Why did you mention the specific hour of twelve-thirty to the doctor?”

  “Platz told me she heard a report at that time, which I thought might have been the shot. I guess now it was the shot—it checks up with a number of things.”

  “I think we’d better have another talk with Mrs. Platz,” Markham suggested. “But first: did you find anything suggestive in the room here—anything to go on?”

  Heath hesitated almost imperceptibly; then he drew from his coat pocket a woman’s handbag and a pair of long white kid gloves, and tossed them on the table in front of the District Attorney.

  “Only these,” he said. “One of the local men found them on the end of the mantel over there.”

  After a casual inspection of the gloves, Markham opened the handbag and turned its contents out on to the table. I came forward and looked on, but Vance remained in his chair, placidly smoking a cigarette.

  The handbag was of fine gold mesh with a catch set with small sapphires. It was unusually small, and obviously designed only for evening wear. The objects which it had held, and which Markham was now inspecting, consisted of a flat watered-silk cigarette-case, a small gold phial of Roger and Gallet’s Fleurs d’Amour perfume, a cloisonné vanity-compact, a short delicate cigarette-holder of inlaid amber, a gold-cased lipstick, a small embroidered French linen handkerchief with “M. St.C.” monogrammed in the corner, and a Yale latch-key.

  “This ought to give us a good lead,” said Markham, indicating the handkerchief. “I suppose you went over the articles carefully, Sergeant?”

  Heath nodded.

  “Yes; and I imagine the bag belongs to the woman Benson was out with last night. The housekeeper told me he had an appointment and went out to dinner in his dress clothes. She didn’t hear Benson when he came back, though. Anyway, we ought to be able to run down Miss ‘M. St.C.’ without much trouble.”

  Markham had taken up the cigarette case again, and as he held it upside down a little shower of loose dried tobacco fell on the table.

  Heath stood up suddenly.

  “Maybe those cigarettes came out of that case,” he suggested. He picked up the intact butt and looked at it. “It’s a lady’s cigarette, all right. It looks as though it might have been smoked in a holder, too.”

  “I beg to differ with you, Sergeant,” drawled Vance. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure. But there’s a bit of lip-rouge on the end of the cigarette. It’s hard to see, on account of the gold tip.”

  Heath looked at Vance sharply; he was too much surprised to be resentful. After a closer inspection of the cigarette, he turned again to Vance.

  “Perhaps you could also tell us from these tobacco grains, if the cigarettes came from this case,” he suggested, with gruff irony.

  “One never knows, does one?” Vance replied, indolently rising.

  Picking up the case, he pressed it wide open, and tapped! it on the table. Then he looked into it closely, and a humorous smile twitched the corners of his mouth. Putting his forefinger deep into the case, he drew out a small cigarette which had evidently been wedged flat along the bottom of, of the pocket.

  “My olfact’
ry gifts won’t be necess’ry now,” he said. “It is apparent even to the naked eye that the cigarettes are, to speak loosely, identical—eh what, Sergeant?”

  Heath grinned good-naturedly.

  “That’s one on us, Mr. Markham.” And he carefully put the cigarette and the stub in an envelope, which he marked and pocketed.

  “You see now, Vance,” observed Markham, “the importance of those cigarette butts.”

  “Can’t say that I do,” responded the other. “Of what possible value is a cigarette butt? You can’t smoke it, y’know.”

  “It’s evidence, my dear fellow,” explained Markham patiently. “One knows that the owner of this bag returned with Benson last night, and remained long enough to smoke two cigarettes.”

  Vance lifted his eyebrows in mock astonishment.

  “One does, does one? Fancy that, now.”

  “It only remains to locate her,” interjected Heath.

  “She’s a rather decided brunette, at any rate—if that fact will facilitate your quest any,” said Vance easily; “though why you should desire to annoy the lady, I can’t for the life of me imagine—really I can’t, don’t y’know.”

  “Why do you say she’s a brunette?” asked Markham.

  “Well, if she isn’t,” Vance told him, sinking listlessly back in his chair, “then she should consult a cosmetician as to the proper way to make up. I see she uses ’Rachel’ powder and Guerlain’s dark lipstick. And it simply isn’t done among blondes, old dear.”

  “I defer, of course, to your expert opinion,” smiled Markham. Then, to Heath: “I guess we’ll have to look for a brunette, Sergeant.”

  “It’s all right with me,” agreed Heath, jocularly. By this time, I think, he had entirely forgiven Vance for destroying the cigarette butt.

  Chapter IV

  The Housekeeper’s Story

  (Friday, June 14th; 11 a.m.)

  “Now,” suggested Markham, “suppose we take a look over the house. I imagine you’ve done that pretty thoroughly already, Sergeant, but I’d like to see the layout. Anyway, I don’t want to question the housekeeper until the body has been removed.”

  Heath rose.

  “Very good, sir. I’d like another look myself.”

  The four of us went into the hall and walked down the passageway to the rear of the house. At the extreme end, on the left, was a door leading downstairs to the basement; but it was locked and bolted.

  “The basement is only used for storage now,” Heath explained, “and the door which opens from it into the street areaway is boarded up. The Platz woman sleeps upstairs—Benson lived here alone, and there’s plenty of spare room in the house—and the kitchen is on this floor.”

  He opened a door on the opposite side of the passageway, and we stepped into a small modern kitchen. Its two high windows, which gave into the paved rear yard at a height of about eight feet from the ground, were securely guarded with iron bars, and, in addition, the sashes were closed and locked. Passing through a swinging door we entered the dining-room, which was directly behind the living-room. The two windows here looked upon a small stone court—really no more than a deep air-well between Benson’s house and the adjoining one—and these also were iron-barred and locked.

  We now re-entered the hallway and stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs leading above.

  “You can see, Mr. Markham,” Heath pointed out, “that whoever shot Benson must have gotten in by the front door. There’s no other way he could have entered. Living alone, I guess Benson was a little touchy on the subject of burglars. The only window that wasn’t barred was the rear one in the living-room; and that was shut and locked. Anyway, it only leads into the inside court. The front windows of the living-room have that ironwork over them; so they couldn’t have been used even to shoot through, for Benson was shot from the opposite direction…. It’s pretty clear the gunman got in the front door.”

  “Looks that way,” said Markham.

  “And pardon me for saying so,” remarked Vance, “but Benson let him in.”

  “Yes?” retorted Heath unenthusiastically. “Well, we’ll find all that out later, I hope.”

  “Oh, doubtless,” Vance drily agreed.

  We ascended the stairs, and entered Benson’s bedroom, which was directly over the living-room. It was severely but well furnished, and in excellent order. The bed was made, showing it had not been slept in that night; and the window-shades were drawn. Benson’s dinner-jacket and white piqué waistcoat were hanging over a chair. A winged collar and a black bow-tie were on the bed, where they had evidently been thrown when Benson had taken them off on returning home. A pair of low evening shoes were standing by the bench at the foot of the bed. In a glass of water on the night-table was a platinum plate of four false teeth; and a toupee of beautiful workmanship was lying on the chiffonier.

  This last item aroused Vance’s special interest. He walked up to it and regarded it closely.

  “Most int’restin’,” he commented. “Our departed friend seems to have worn false hair; did you know that, Markham?”

  “I always suspected it,” was the indifferent answer.

  Heath, who had remained standing on the threshold, seemed a little impatient.

  “There’s only one other room on this floor,” he said, leading the way down the hall. “It’s also a bedroom—for guests, so the housekeeper explained.”

  Markham and I looked in through the door, but Vance remained lounging against the balustrade at the head of the stairs. He was manifestly uninterested in Alvin Benson’s domestic arrangements; and when Markham and Heath and I went up to the third floor, he sauntered down into the main hallway. When at length we descended from our tour of inspection he was casually looking over the titles in Benson’s bookcase.

  We had just reached the foot of the stairs when the front door opened and two men with a stretcher entered. The ambulance from the Department of Welfare had arrived to take the corpse to the morgue; and the brutal, businesslike way in which Benson’s body was covered up, lifted on to the stretcher, carried out, and shoved into the wagon, made me shudder. Vance, on the other hand, after the merest fleeting glance at the two men, paid no attention to them. He had found a volume with a beautiful Humphrey-Milford binding, and was absorbed in its Roger Payne tooling and powdering.

  “I think an interview with Mrs. Platz is indicated now,” said Markham; and Heath went to the foot of the stairs and gave a loud, brisk order.

  Presently, a grey-haired, middle-aged woman entered the living-room, accompanied by a plain-clothes man smoking a large cigar. Mrs. Platz was of the simple, old-fashioned, motherly type, with a calm, benevolent countenance. She impressed me as highly capable, and as a woman given little to hysteria—an impression strengthened by her attitude of passive resignation. She seemed, however, to possess that taciturn shrewdness that is so often found among the ignorant.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Platz,” Markham greeted her kindly. “I’m the District Attorney, and there are some questions I want to ask you.”

  She took a straight chair by the door and waited, gazing nervously from one to the other of us. Markham’s gentle persuasive voice, though, appeared to encourage her, and her answers became more and more fluent.

  The main facts that transpired from a quarter-of-an-hour’s examination may be summed up as follows:

  Mrs. Platz had been Benson’s housekeeper for four years and was the only servant employed. She lived in the house, and her room was on the third, or top, floor in the rear.

  On the afternoon of the preceding day Benson had returned from his office at an unusually early hour—around four o’clock—announcing to Mrs. Platz that he would not be home for dinner that evening. He had remained in the living-room, with the hall door closed, until half-past six, and had then gone upstairs to dress.

  He had left the house about seven o’clock, but had not said where he was going. He had remarked casually that he would return in fairly good season, but had told Mrs. Platz
she need not wait up for him—which was her custom whenever he intended bringing guests home. This was the last she had seen him alive. She had not heard him when he returned that night.

  She had retired about half-past ten, and, because of the heat, had left the door ajar. She had been awakened some time later by a loud detonation. It had startled her, and she had turned on the light by her bed, noting that it was just half-past twelve by the small alarm-clock she used for rising. It was, in fact, the early hour which had reassured her. Benson, whenever he went out for the evening, rarely returned home before two; and this fact, coupled with the stillness of the house, had made her conclude that the noise which had aroused her had been merely the backfiring of an automobile in Forty-ninth Street. Consequently, she had dismissed the matter from her mind, and gone back to sleep.

  At seven o’clock the next morning she came downstairs as usual to begin her day’s duties, and, on her way to the front door to bring in the milk and cream, had discovered Benson’s body. All the shades in the living-room were down.

  At first she thought Benson had fallen asleep in his chair, but when she saw the bullet hole and noticed that the electric lights had been switched off, she knew he was dead. She had gone at once to the telephone in the hall and, asking the operator for the Police Station, had reported the murder. She had then remembered Benson’s brother, Major Anthony Benson, and had telephoned him also. He had arrived at the house almost simultaneously with the detectives from the West Forty-seventh Street station. He had questioned her a little, talked with the plain-clothes men, and gone away before the men from Headquarters arrived.

  “And now, Mrs. Platz,” said Markham, glancing at the notes he had been making, “one or two more questions, and we won’t trouble you further…. Have you noticed anything in Mr. Benson’s actions lately that might lead you to suspect that he was worried—or, let us say, in fear of anything happening to him?”