The Benson Murder Case (3 page)

“I'm on my way to Benson's. Do you care to come along? You asked for the experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise.”

I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed, Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the District Attorney on one of his investigations; and that Markham had promised to take him on his next important case. Vance's interest in the psychology of human behaviour had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which had been of long standing, had made the request possible.

“You remember everything, don't you?” Vance replied lazily. “An admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel: it lacked a few minutes of nine. “But what an indecent hour! Suppose someone should see me.”

Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair.

“Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o'clock in the morning, you'll have to hurry. I certainly won't take you in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. And I most certainly won't wait over five minutes for you to get dressed.”

“Why the haste, old dear?” Vance asked, yawning. “The chap's dead, don't y' know; he can't possibly run away.”

“Come, get a move on, you orchid,” the other urged. “This affair is no joke. It's damned serious; and from the looks of it, it's going to cause an ungodly scandal. What are you going to do?”

“Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of the common people,” returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.

He rang for Currie, and ordered his clothes brought to him.

“I'm attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse, and I want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit? … And a lavender tie, by all means.”

“I trust you won't also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.

“Tut! Tut!” Vance chid him. “You've been reading Mr. Hichens. Such heresy in a District Attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear
boutonnières
. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are
roués
and saxophone players…. But tell me about the departed Benson.”

Vance was now dressing, with Currie's assistance, at a rate of speed I had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose I recognised the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.

“You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe,” the District Attorney said. “Well, early this morning his housekeeper 'phoned the local precinct station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and sitting in his favourite chair in his living-room. The message, of course, was put through at once to the Telegraph Bureau at Headquarters, and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour: later, Major Benson, Alvin's brother, 'phoned me and asked me, as a special favour, to take charge. I've known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn't very well refuse. So I took a hurried
breakfast and started for Benson's house. He lives on West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped in to see if you cared to go along.”

“Most consid'rate,” murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. “Come, Van. We'll all gaze upon the defunot Benson. I'm sure some of Markham's sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me of the crime; and I'll feel safer, don't y'know, with legal talent at hand…. No objections—eh, what, Markham?”

“Certainly not,” the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the affair to offer any ceremonious objections, and I followed Vance and Markham downstairs.

As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue, I marvelled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham, forthright, conventional, a trifle austere, and over-serious in his dealing with life; and Vance, casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship: it was as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and sensation that had been denied himself. Markham represented to Vance the solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolised for Markham the care-free, exotio, gipsy spirit of intellectual adventure. Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface; and despite Markham's exaggerated deprecations of the other's attitudes and opinions, I believe he respected Vance's intelligence more profoundly than that of any other man he knew.

As we rode up town that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy. No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked:

“What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions, aside from removing one's hat in the presence of the body?”

“You keep your hat on,” growled Markham.

“My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int'restin'! Perhaps one takes off one's shoes so as not to confuse the footprints.”

“No,” Markham told him. “The guests remain fully clothed—in which the function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set.”

“My
dear
Markham!”—Vance's tone was one of melancholy reproof—“The horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours was pos'tively Epworth Leaguish.”

Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance's badinage.

“There are one or two things,” he said soberly, “that I think I'd better warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause considerable noise, and there'll be a lot of jealousy and battling for honours. I won't be fallen upon and caressed affectionately by the police for coming in at this stage of the game; so be careful not to rub their bristles the wrong way. My assistant, who's there now, tells me he thinks the Inspector has put Heath in charge. Heath's a sergeant in the Homicide Bureau, and is undoubtedly convinced at the present moment that I'm taking hold in order to get the publicity.”

“Aren't you his technical superior?” asked Vance.

“Of course; and that makes the situation just so much more delicate…. I wish to God the Major hadn't called me up.”

“
Eheu!
” sighed Vance. “The world is full of Heaths, Beastly nuisances.”

“Don't misunderstand me,” Markham hastened to assure him. “Heath is a good man—in fact, as good a man as we've got. The mere fact that he was assigned to the case shows how seriously the affair is regarded at Headquarters. There'll be no unpleasantness about my taking charge, you understand; but I want the atmosphere to be as halcyon as possible. Heath'll resent my bringing along you two chaps as spectators, anyway; so I beg of you, Vance, emulate the modest violet.”

“I prefer the blushing rose, if you don't mind,” Vance protested. “However, I'll instantly give the hypersensitive Heath one of my choicest
Régie
cigarettes with the rose-petal tips.”

“If you do,” smiled Markham, “he'll probably arrest you as a suspicious character.”

We had drawn up abruptly in front of an old brown-stone residence on the upper side of Forty-eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a house of the better class, built on a twenty-five foot lot in a day when permanency and beauty were still matters of consideration among the city's architects. The design was conventional, to accord with the other houses in the block, but a touch of luxury and individuality was to be seen in its decorative copings and in the stone carvings about the entrance and above the windows.

There was a shallow paved areaway between the street line and the front elevation of the house; but this was enclosed in a high iron railing, and the only entrance was by way of the front door, which was about six feet above the street level at the top of a flight of ten broad stone stairs. Between the entrance and the right-hand wall were two spacious windows covered with heavy iron grilles.

A considerable crowd of morbid onlookers had gathered in front of the house; and on the steps lounged several alert-looking young men whom I took to be newspaper reporters. The door of our taxicab was opened by a uniformed patrol man who saluted Markham with exaggerated respect and ostentatiously cleared a passage for us through the gaping throng of idlers. Another uniformed patrolman stood in the little vestibule, and on recognising Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted with great dignity.

“
Ave, Cœsar, te salutamus
” whispered Vance, grinning.

“Be quiet,” Markham grumbled. “I've got troubles enough without your garbled quotations.”

As we passed through the massive carved-oak front door into the main hallway, we were met by Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, a serious, swarthy young man with a prematurely lined face, whose appearance gave one the impression that most of the woes of humanity were resting upon his shoulders.

“Good morning, Chief,” he greeted Markham, with eager relief. “I'm damned glad you've got here. This case'll rip things wide open. Cut-and-dried murder, and not a lead.”

Markham nodded gloomily, and looked past him into the living-room.

“Who's here?” he asked.

“The whole works, from the Chief Inspector down,” Dinwiddie told him, with a hopeless shrug, as if the fact boded ill for all concerned.

At that moment a tall, massive, middle-aged man with a pink complexion and a closely-cropped white moustache, appeared in the doorway of the living-room. On seeing Markham he came forward stiffly with outstretched hand. I recognised him at once as Chief Inspector O'Brien, who was in command of the entire Police Department. Dignified greetings were exchanged between him and Markham, and then Vance and I were introduced to him. Inspector O'Brien gave us each a curt, silent nod, and turned back to the living-room, with Markham, Dinwiddie, Vance and myself following.

The room, which was entered by a wide double door about ten feet down the hall, was a spacious one, almost square, and with high ceilings. Two windows gave on the street; and on the extreme right of the north wall, opposite to the front of the house, was another window opening on a paved court. To the left of this window were the sliding doors leading into the dining-room at the rear.

The room presented an appearance of garish opulence. About the walls hung several elaborately framed paintings of racehorses and a number of mounted hunting trophies. A highly coloured oriental rug covered nearly the entire floor. In the middle of the east wall, facing the door, was an ornate fireplace and carved marble mantel. Placed diagonally in the corner on the right stood a walnut upright piano with copper trimmings. Then there was a mahogany bookcase with glass doors and figured curtains, a sprawling tapestried davenport, a squat Venetian tabouret with inlaid mother-of-pearl, a teak-wood stand containing a large brass samovar, and a buhl-topped centre-table nearly six feet long. At the side of the table nearest the hallway, with its back to the front windows, stood a large wickei lounge chair with a high, fan-shaped back.

In this chair reposed the body of Alvin Benson.

Though I had served two years at the front in the World
War and had seen death in many terrible guises, I could not repress a strong sense of revulsion at the sight of this murdered man. In France, death had seemed an inevitable part of my daily routine, but here all the organisms of environment were opposed to the idea of fatal violence. The bright June sunshine was pouring into the room, and through the open windows came the continuous din of the city's noises, which, for all their cacophony, are associated with peace and security and the orderly social processes of life.

Benson's body was reclining in the chair in an attitude so natural that one almost expected him to turn to us and ask why we were intruding upon his privacy. His head was resting against the chair's back. His right leg was crossed over his left in a position of comfortable relaxation. His right arm was resting easily on the centre-table, and his left arm lay along the chair's arm. But that which most strikingly gave his attitude its appearance of naturalness, was a small book which he held in his right hand with his thumb still marking the place where he had evidently been reading.
¹

He had been shot—through the forehead—from the front; and the small circular bullet-mark was now almost black as a result of the coagulation of the blood. A large dark spot on the rug at the rear of the chair indicated the extent of the hæmorrhage caused by the grinding passage of the bullet through his brain. Had it not been for these grisly indications one might have thought that he had merely paused momentarily in his reading to lean back and rest.

He was attired in an old smoking-jacket and red felt bedroom slippers, but still wore his dress trousers and evening shirt, though he was collarless, and the neck band of the shirt had been unbuttoned as if for comfort. He was not an attractive man physically, being almost completely bald and more than a little stout. His face was flabby, and the puffiness of his neck was doubly conspicuous
without its confining collar. With a slight shudder of distaste I ended my brief contemplation of him, and turned to the other occupants of the room.

Two burly fellows with large hands and feet, their black felt hats pushed far back on their heads, were minutely inspecting the grill-work over the front windows. They seemed to be giving particular attention to the points where the bars were cemented into the masonry; and one of them had just taken hold of a grille with both hands and was shaking it, simian-wise, as if to test its strength. Another man, of medium height and dapper appearance, with a small blond moustache, was bending over in front of the grate looking intently, so it seemed, at the dusty gas-logs. On the far side of the table a thick-set man in blue serge and a derby hat, stood with arms a-kimbo scrutinising the silent figure in the chair. His eyes, hard and pale blue, were narrowed, and his square prognathous jaw was rigidly set. He was gazing with rapt intensity at Benson's body, as though he hoped, by sheer power of concentration, to probe the secret of the murder.