Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  Vance had sufficient means to indulge his instinct for collecting, and possessed a fine assortment of pictures and objets d’art. His collection was heterogeneous only in its superficial characteristics: every piece he owned embodied some principle of form or line that related it to all the others. One who knew art could feel the unity and consistency in all the items with which he surrounded himself, however widely separated they were in point of time or métier11 or surface appeal. Vance, I have always felt, was one of those rare human beings, a collector with a definite philosophic point of view.

  His apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street—actually the two top floors of an old mansion, beautifully remodelled and in part rebuilt to secure spacious rooms and lofty ceilings—was filled, but not crowded, with rare specimens of oriental and occidental, ancient and modern, art. His paintings ranged from the Italian primitives to Cézanne and Matisse; and among his collection of original drawings were works as widely separated as those of Michelangelo and Picasso. Vance’s Chinese prints constituted one of the finest private collections in this country. They included beautiful examples of the work of Ririomin, Rianchu, Jinkomin, Kakei and Mokkei.12

  “The Chinese,” Vance once said to me, “are the truly great artists of the East. They were the men whose work expressed most intensely a broad philosophic spirit. By contrast the Japanese were superficial. It’s a long step between the little more than decorative souci of a Hokusai13 and the profoundly thoughtful and conscious artistry of a Ririomin. Even when Chinese art degenerated under the Manchus, we find in it a deep philosophic quality—a spiritual sensibilité, so to speak. And in the modern copies of copies—what is called the bunjinga style14—we still have pictures of profound meaning.”

  Vance’s catholicity of taste in art was remarkable. His collection was as varied as that of a museum. It embraced a blackfigured amphora by Amasis,15 a proto-Corinthian vase in the Ægean style, Koubatcha and Rhodian plates,16 Athenian pottery, a sixteenth-century Italian holy-water stoup of rock crystal, pewter of the Tudor period (several pieces bearing the double-rose hall-mark),17 a bronze plaque by Cellini, a triptych of Limoges enamel, a Spanish retable of an altar-piece by Vallfogona,18 several Etruscan bronzes, an Indian Greco Buddhist, a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty,19 a number of very fine Renaissance woodcuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian and early French ivory carvings.

  His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik,20 a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre),21 two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset,22 and several Arrentine23 bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers.24 On top of one of his embayed25 Jacobean book cases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks and statuette-fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.

  A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance’s art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man’s penchants and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.

  Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute.26 And he meant it literally.

  Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian27 cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur about him.

  He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits;* moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather than the scholar’s, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet28 I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Cæsar and Cleopatra played by ForbesRobertson,29 I received a similar impression.†

  Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doings things well without any extensive practice. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played on our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.

  In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favorite was the Stuyvesant,30 because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.

  Incidentally, he was one of the most unerring poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.

  Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had co-ordinated and rationalized this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic principles of psychology, and all his courses at college had either centered about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence and pleading, Vance was reconnoitring the whole field of cultural endeavor. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics and political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages.* But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.

  Vance’s mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savored of credulousness, and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.

  “Until we can approach all human problems,” he once
remarked, “with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guineapig strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth.”

  Vance led an active, but by no means animated, social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal.—I can not remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct,—and when he went forth into the social world it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his “duty” affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o’clock when the District Attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York’s shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.

  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.

  3.June 14 was a Friday in 1918 and not again until 1929. As will be seen, there is other evidence supporting a 1918 date.

  4.Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939) was an important French art dealer and collector who championed the Impressionist Paul Cézanne as well as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and other contemporary French artists at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  Ambroise Vollard, 1910.

  5.These appear to be fictional.

  6.John Loughery, in his monumental Alias S. S. Van Dine: The Man Who Created Philo Vance (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), notes that “Van Dine is a noncharacter, a mute observer and recorder of events who is not allowed to speak—not once—in his own voice in the dialogue of the stories. Unlike, Watson, Hastings, Polton, Archie Goodwin, or any other narrator of comparable importance before or after him Van Dine—a lawyer and a prosaic soul—hasn’t been given a trace of a personality himself. He is unmercifully silenced” (p. 177).

  7.Originally, a book of accounts—credits and debits—but colloquially, a book of comments or notes.

  8.This appears to be a fictional investment.

  * [Author’s note:] As a matter of fact, the same water-colors that Vance obtained for $250 and $300 were bringing three times as much four years later.

  [Editor’s note: Of course, today Impressionist works sell for millions. “Aunt Agatha,” whose fortune was the source of Vance’s life of luxury, is never described in any detail.]

  9.An informal talk or article, usually on a literary subject.

  10.In the 1860s, local farmers in Boetiz began to report Greek terra-cotta figurines that they discovered in the fields, principally around the town of Tanagra. These figures, from the late fourth century B.C.E., caught the eye of art collectors and became very popular. Basil Hallward, the painter of the eponymous Picture of Dorian Gray (by Oscar Wilde, 1891), has Tanagra figurines in his studio.

  11.An area of expertise or specialty.

  12.These were all real Chinese painters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries C.E.

  13.Hokousai was a modern Japanese painter (1760–1849), influenced profoundly by the Chinese painters who preceded him.

  14.The bunjinga style was that of the Japanese painters who considered themselves literati or intellectuals while emulating and admiring traditional Chinese culture. The style flourished during the late Edo period, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  15.A Greek artist active around 550 B.C.E.—the works were signed “Made by Amasis.”

  16.From the sixteenth century C.E., typically in red, white, and blue enamels.

  17.An emblem of the Tudor kings Henry VII and Henry VIII, combining of the symbols of the Yorks and the Lancesters.

  18.Vallfogna is one of several place-names in Catalonia, not a specific artist.

  19.The Ming Dynasty spanned 1368 C.E. to 1644.

  20.A city in lower Egypt, close to the location of Bubastis.

  21.A Theban statuette of a young woman, acquired by the Louvre in 1825.

  22.Two of the four sons of the Egyptian god Horus.

  23.Arezzo was an important Etruscan city, and its pottery flourished from the fourth century B.C.E. through the first century C.E.

  24.A depiction of dancers who performed at the Karneia, a festival important throughout the Doric world and especially to the Spartans.

  25.The word is figurative here: “Embayed” means a bay enclosed by ice or other obstacles.

  26.The phrase is attributed to Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien (1772–1804), who was executed for allegedly aiding Britain and betraying France. The phrase means “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder/mistake.”

  27.Juvenal was a Roman poet of the late 1st-century C.E.-2nd century known for his Satires.

  * [Author’s note:] I am thinking particularly of Bronzino’s portraits of Pietro de’ Medici and Cosimo de’ Medici, in the National Gallery, and of Vasari’s medallion portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Vecchio Palazzo, Florence.

  28.John Barrymore, born John Sidney Blyth (1882–1942), was the scion of the great Drew and Barrymore acting clans; his 1922 Hamlet was a milestone in American theater.

  29.Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853–1937) was one of the foremost British actors of the era, also known for his Hamlet (preceding Barrymore).

  † [Author’s note:] Once when Vance was suffering from sinusitis, he had an X–ray photograph of his head made; and the accompanying chart described him as a “marked dolichocephalic” and a “disharmonious Nordic.” It also contained the following data:—cephalic index 75; nose, leptorhine, with an index of 48; facial angle, 85°; vertical index, 72; upper facial index, 54; interpupillary width, 67; chin, masognathous, with an index of 103; sella turcica, abnormally large.

  30.No such club is listed in the 1922–23 R. L. Polk & Co.’s Trow's General Directory of the City of New York.

  * [Author’s note:] “Culture,” Vance said to me shortly after I had met him, “is polyglot; and the knowledge of many tongues is essential to an understanding of the world’s intellectual and æsthetic achievements. Especially are the Greek and Latin classics vitiated by translation.” I quote the remark here because his omnivorous reading in languages other than English, coupled with his amazingly retentive memory, had a tendency to affect his own speech. And while it may appear to some that his speech was at times pedantic, I have tried, throughout these chronicles to quote him literally, in the hope of presenting a portrait of the man as he was.

  CHAPTER II

  At the Scene of the Crime

  (Friday, June 14; 9 a.m.)

  John F.-X. Markham, as you remember, had been elected District Attorney of New York Coun
ty on the Independent Reform Ticket31 during one of the city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall.32 He served his four years, and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents. He was an indefatigable worker, and projected the District Attorney’s office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his constituents, but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in those who had opposed him on partisan lines.

  He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable one that even to-day it is not infrequently referred to in legal and political discussions.

  Markham was a tall, strongly-built man in the middle forties, with a cleanshaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly grey hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political office-holders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid foundation of good-breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of gentility.

  When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority. It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal justice—had in that moment been born in Markham’s body. I was to witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance’s living-room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive sternness of his expression; and I knew that he was deeply troubled over Alvin Benson’s murder.