The Benson Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

“What time did Major Benson get home the night his brother was shot?”

  The boy’s eyes opened wide.

  “He came in about ’leven—right after show time,” he answered, with only a momentary hesitation.

  (I have set down the rest of the questions and answers in dramatic-dialogue form, for the purposes of space economy.)

  VANCE: He spoke to you, I suppose?

  BOY: Yes, sir. He told me he’d been to the theatre, and said what a rotten show it was—and that he had an awful headache.

  VANCE: How do you happen to remember so well what he said a week ago?

  BOY: Why, his brother was murdered that night!

  VANCE: And the murder caused so much excitement that you naturally recalled everything that happened at the time in connection with Major Benson?

  BOY: Sure—he was the murdered guy’s brother.

  VANCE: When he came in that night did he say anything about the day of the month?

  BOY: Nothin’ except that he guessed his bad luck in pickin’ a bum show was on account of it bein’ the thirteenth.

  VANCE: Did he say anything else?

  Boy (grinning): He said he’d make the thirteenth my lucky day, and he gave me all the silver he had in his pocket—nickels and dimes and quarters and one fifty-cent piece.

  VANCE: How much altogether?

  BOY: Three dollars and forty-five cents.

  VANCE: And then he went to his room?

  BOY: Yes, sir—I took him up. He lives on the third floor.

  VANCE: Did he go out again later?

  BOY: No, sir.

  VANCE: How do you know?

  BOY: I’d ’ve seen him. I was either answerin’ the switchboard or runnin’ the elevator all night. He couldn’t ’ve got out without my seem’ him.

  VANCE: Were you alone on duty?

  BOY: After ten o’clock there’s never but one boy on.

  VANCE: And there’s no other way a person could leave the house except by the front door?

  BOY: No, sir.

  VANCE: When did you next see Major Benson?

  Boy (after thinking a moment): He rang for some cracked ice, and I took it up.

  VANCE: What time?

  BOY: Why—I don’t know exactly…. Yes, I do! It was half-past twelve.

  Vance (smiling faintly): He asked you the time perhaps?

  BOY: Yes, sir, he did. He asked me to look at his clock in his parlour.

  VANCE: How did he happen to do that?

  BOY: Well, I took up the ice, and he was in bed; and he asked me to put it in his pitcher in the parlour. When I was doin’ it he called to me to look at the clock on the mantel and tell him what time it was. He said his watch had stopped and he wanted to set it.

  VANCE: What did he say then?

  BOY: Nothin’ much. He told me not to ring his bell, no matter who called up. He said he wanted to sleep, and didn’t want to be woke up.

  VANCE: Was he emphatic about it?

  BOY: Well—he meant it, all right.

  VANCE: Did he say anything else?

  BOY: No. He just said good night and turned out the light, and I came on downstairs.

  VANCE: What light did he turn out?

  BOY: The one in his bedroom.

  VANCE: Could you see into his bedroom from the parlour?

  BOY: No. The bedroom’s off the hall.

  VANCE: How could you tell the light was turned off then?

  BOY: The bedroom door was open, and the light was shinin’ into the hall.

  VANCE: Did you pass the bedroom door when you went out?

  BOY: Sure—you have to.

  VANCE: And was the door still open?

  BOY: Yes.

  VANCE: Is that the only door to the bedroom?

  BOY: Yes.

  VANCE: Where was Major Benson when you entered the apartment?

  BOY: In bed.

  VANCE: How do you know?

  Boy (mildly indignant): I saw him.

  Vance (after a pause): You’re quite sure he didn’t come downstairs again?

  BOY: I told you I’d ’ve seen him if he had.

  VANCE: Couldn’t he have walked down at some time when you had the elevator upstairs, without your seeing him?

  BOY: Sure, he could. But I didn’t take the elevator up after I’d took the Major his cracked ice until round two-thirty, when Mr. Montagu came in.

  VANCE: You took no one up in the elevator, then, between the time you brought Major Benson the ice and when Mr. Montagu came in at two-thirty?

  BOY: Nobody.

  VANCE: And you didn’t leave the hall here between those ho ars?

  BOY: No. I was sittin’ here all the time.

  VANCE: Then the last time you saw him was in bed at twelve-thirty?

  BOY: Yes—until early in the morning when some dame2 ’phoned him and said his brother had been murdered. He came down and went out about ten minutes after.

  VANCE (giving the boy a dollar): That’s all. But don’t you open your mouth to anyone about our being here, or you may find yourself in the lock-up—understand? … Now, get back to your job.”

  When the boy had left us, Vance turned a pleading gaze upon Markham.

  “Now, old man, for the protection of society, and the higher demands of justice, and the greatest good for the greatest number, and pro bono publico, and that sort of thing, you must once more adopt a course of conduct contr’ry to your innate promptings—or whatever the phrase you used. Vulgarly put, I want to snoop through the Major’s apartment at once.”

  “What for?” Markham’s tone was one of exclamatory protest. “Have you completely lost your senses? There’s no getting round the boy’s testimony. I may be weak-minded, but I know when a witness like that is telling the truth.”

  “Certainly, he’s telling the truth,” agreed Vance serenely. “That’s just why I want to go up. Come, my Markham. There’s no danger of the Major returning en surprise at this hour…. And”—he smiled cajolingly—“you promised me every assistance, don’t y’know.”

  Markham was vehement in his remonstrances, but Vance was equally vehement in his insistence; and a few minutes later we were trespassing, by means of a pass-key, in Major Benson’s apartment.

  The only entrance was a door leading from the public hall into a narrow passageway which extended straight ahead into the living-room at the rear. On the right of this passageway, near the entrance, was a door opening into the bedroom.

  Vance walked directly back into the living-room. On the right-hand wall was a fireplace and a mantel on which sat an old-fashioned mahogany clock. Near the mantel, in the far corner, stood a small table containing a silver ice-water service consisting of a pitcher and six goblets.

  “There is our very convenient clock,” said Vance. “And there is the pitcher in which the boy put the ice—imitation Sheffield plate.”

  Going to the window he glanced down into the paved rear court twenty-five or thirty feet below.

  “The Major certainly couldn’t have escaped through the window,” he remarked.

  He turned and stood a moment looking into the passageway.

  “The boy could easily have seen the light go out in the bedroom, if the door was open. The reflection on the glazed white wall of the passage would have been quite brilliant.”

  Then, retracing his steps, he entered the bedroom. It contained a small canopied bed facing the door, “and beside it stood a night-table on which was an electric lamp. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he looked about him, and turned the lamp on and off by the socket-chain. Presently he fixed his eyes on Markham.

  “You see how the Major got out without the boy’s knowing it—eh, what?”

  “By levitation, I suppose,” submitted Markham.

  “It amounted to that, at any rate,” replied Vance. “Deuced ingenious, too…. Listen, Markham. At half-past twelve the Major rang for cracked ice. The boy brought it, and when he entered he looked in through the door, which was open, and saw the Major in bed. The Major tol
d him to put the ice in the pitcher in the living-room. The boy walked on down the passage and across the living-room to the table in the corner. The Major then called to him to learn the time by the clock on the mantel. The boy looked: it was half-past twelve. The Major replied that he was not to be disturbed again, said good night, turned off this light on this night-table, jumped out of bed—he was dressed, of course—and stepped quickly out into the public hall before the boy had time to empty the ice and return to the passage. The Major ran down the stairs and was in the street before the elevator descended. The boy, when he passed the bedroom door on his way out, could not have seen whether the Major was still in bed or not, even if he had looked in, for the room was then in darkness. Clever, what?”

  “The thing would have been possible, of course,” conceded Markham. “But your specious imaginings fail to account for his return.”

  “That was the simplest part of the scheme. He prob’bly waited in a doorway across the street for some other tenant to go in. The boy said a Mr. Montagu returned about two-thirty. Then the Major slipped in when he knew the elevator had ascended, and walked up the stairs.”

  Markham, smiling patiently, said nothing.

  “You perceived,” continued Vance, “the pains taken by the Major to establish the date and the hour, and to impress them on the boy’s mind. Poor show—headache—unlucky day. Why unlucky? The thirteenth, to be sure. But lucky for the boy. A handful of money—all silver. Singular way of tipping, what? But a dollar bill might have been forgotten.”

  A shadow clouded Markham’s face, but his voice was as indulgently impersonal as ever.

  “I prefer your case against Mrs. Platz.”

  “Ah, but I’ve not finished.” Vance stood up. “I have hopes of finding the weapon, don’t y’know.”

  Markham now studied him with amused incredulity.

  “That, of course, would be a contributory factor…. You really expect to find it?”

  “Without the slightest diff’culty,” Vance pleasantly assured him.

  He went to the chiffonier and began opening the drawers.

  “Our absent host didn’t leave the pistol at Alvin’s house; and he was far too canny to throw it away. Being a major in the late war, he’d be expected to have such a weapon: in fact, several persons may actu’lly have known he possessed one. And if he is innocent—as he fully expects us to assume—why shouldn’t it be in its usual place? Its absence, d’ye see, would be more incriminatin’ than its presence. Also, there’s a most int’restin’ psychological factor involved. An innocent person who was afraid of being thought guilty, would have hidden it, or thrown it away—like Captain Leacock, for example. But a guilty man, wishing to create an appearance of innocence, would have put it back exactly where it was before the shooting.”

  He was still searching through the chiffonier.

  “Our only problem, then, is to discover the custom’ry abiding place of the Major’s gun…. It’s not here in the chiffonier,” he added, closing the last drawer.

  He opened a kitbag standing at the foot of the bed, and rifled its contents.

  “Not here,” he murmured indifferently. “The clothes-closet is the only other likely place.”

  Going across the room, he opened the closet door. Unhurriedly he switched on the light. There, on the upper shelf, in plain view, lay an army belt with a bulging holster.

  Vance lifted it with extreme delicacy and placed it on the bed near the window.

  “There you are, old chap,” he cheerfully announced, bending over it closely. “Please take particular note that the entire belt and holster—with only the exception of the holster’s flap—is thickly coated with dust. The flap is comparatively clean, showing it has been opened recently…. Not conclusive, of course; but you’re so partial to clues, Markham.”

  He carefully removed the pistol from the holster.

  “Note, also, that the gun itself is innocent of dust. It has been recently cleaned, I surmise.”

  His next act was to insert a corner of his handkerchief into the barrel. Then, withdrawing it, he held it up.

  “You see—eh, what? Even the inside of the barrel is immaculate…. And I’ll wager all my Cézannes against an L.L.B. degree that there isn’t a cartridge missing.”

  He extracted the magazines, and poured the cartridges on to the night-table, where they lay in a neat row before us. There were seven—the full number for that style of gun.

  “Again, Markham, I present you with one of your revered clues. Cartridges that remain in a magazine for a long time become slightly tarnished, for the catch-plate is not airtight. But a fresh box of cartridges is well sealed, and its contents retain their lustre much longer.”

  He pointed to the first cartridge that had rolled out of the magazine.

  “Observe that this one cartridge—the last to be inserted into the magazine—is a bit brighter than its fellows. The inf’rence is—you’re an adept at inf’rences, y’know—that it is a newer cartridge, and was placed in the magazine rather recently.”

  He looked straight into Markham’s eyes.

  “It was placed there to take the place of the one which Captain Hagedorn is keeping.”

  Markham lifted his head jerkily, as if shaking himself out of an encroaching spell of hypnosis. He smiled, but with an effort.

  “I still think your case against Mrs. Platz is your masterpiece.”

  “My picture of the Major is merely blocked in,” answered Vance. “The revealin’ touches are to come. But first, a brief catechism…. How did the Major know that brother Alvin would be home at twelve-thirty on the night of the thirteenth? He heard Alvin invite Miss St. Clair to dinner—remember Miss Hoffman’s story of his eavesdropping?—and he also heard her say she’d unfailingly leave at midnight. When I said yesterday, after we had left Miss St. Clair, that something she told us would help convict the guilty person, I referred to her statement that midnight was her invariable hour of departure. The Major therefore knew Alvin would be home about half-past twelve, and he was pretty sure that no one else would be there. In any event, he could have waited for him, what? … Could ho have secured an immediate audience with his brother en déshabillé? Yes. He tapped on the window; his voice was recognised beyond any shadow of doubt; and he was admitted instanter. Alvin had no sartorial modesties in front of his brother, and would have thought nothing of receiving him without his teeth and toupee…. Is the Major the right height?—He is. I purposely stood beside him in your office the other day; and he is almost exactly five feet ten and a half.”

  Markham sat staring silently at the disembowelled pistol. Vance had been speaking in a voice quite different from that he had used when constructing his hypothetical cases against the others; and Markham had sensed the change.

  “We now come to the jewels,” Vance was saying. “I once expressed the belief, you remember, that when we found the security for Pfyfe’s note, we would put our hands on the murderer. I thought then the Major had the jewels; and after Miss Hoffman told us of his requesting her not to mention the package, I was sure of it. Alvin took them home on the afternoon of the thirteenth, and the Major undoubtedly knew it. This fact, I imagine, influenced his decisions to end Alvin’s life that night. He wanted those baubles, Markham.”

  He rose jauntily and stepped to the door.

  “And now, it remains only to find ’em…. The murderer took ’em away with him; they couldn’t have left the house any other way. Therefore, they’re in this apartment. If the Major had taken them to the office, someone might have seen them; and if he had placed them in a safe deposit-box, the clerk at the bank might have remembered the episode. Moreover, the same psychology that applies to the gun, applies to the jewels. The Major has acted throughout on the assumption of his innocence; and, as a matter of fact, the trinkets were safer here than elsewhere. There’d be time enough to dispose of them when the affair blew over…. Come with me a moment, Markham. It’s painful, I know; and your heart’s too weak for an anæsthet
ic.”

  Markham followed him down a passageway in a kind of daze. I felt a great sympathy for the man, for now there was no question that he knew Vance was serious in his demonstration of the Major’s guilt. Indeed, I have always felt that Markham suspected the true purpose of Vance’s request to investigate the Major’s alibi, and that his opposition was due as much to his fear of the results as to his impatience with the other’s irritating methods. Not that he would have balked ultimately at the truth, despite his long friendship for Major Benson; but he was struggling—as I see it now—with the inevitability of circumstances, hoping against hope that he had read Vance incorrectly, and that, by vigorously contesting each step of the way, he might alter the very shape of destiny itself.

  Vance led the way to the living-room, and stood for five minutes inspecting the various pieces of furniture, while Markham remained in the doorway watching him through narrowed lids, his hands crowded deep into his pockets.

  “We could, of course, have an expert searcher rake the apartment over inch by inch,” observed Vance. “But I don’t think it necess’ry. The Major’s a bold, cunning soul: witness his wide square forehead, the dominating stare of his globular eyes, the perpendicular spine, and the indrawn abdomen. He’s forthright in all his mental operations. Like Poe’s Minister D—, he would recognise the futility of painstakingly secreting the jewels in some obscure corner. And anyhow, he had no object in secreting them. He merely wished to hide ’em where there’d be no chance of their being seen. This naturally suggests a lock and key, what? There was no such cache in the bedroom—which is why I came here.”

  He walked to a squat rosewood desk in the corner, and tried all its drawers; but they were unlocked. He next tested the table drawer; but that, too, was unlocked. A small Spanish cabinet by the window proved equally disappointing.

  “Markham, I simply must find a locked drawer,” he said.

  He inspected the room again and was about to return to the bedroom when his eyes fell on a Circassian-walnut humidor half hidden by a pile of magazines on the undershelf of the centre-table. He stopped abruptly, and going quickly to the box, endeavoured to lift the top. It was locked.

  “Let’s see,” he mused. “What does the Major smoke? Romeo y Julieta Perfeccionados, I believe—but they’re not sufficiently valuable to keep under lock and key.”