The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van DineЧитать онлайн книгу.
done. The most mentalized women are emotional when it comes to a fundamental issue like taking a life. That a woman could have coldly planned such a murder and then executed it with such business-like efficiency—aiming a single shot at her victim’s temple at a distance of five or six feet—, would be contr’ry, d’ ye see, to everything we know of human nature. Again: women don’t stand up to argue a point before a seated antagonist. Somehow they seem to feel more secure sitting down. They talk better sitting; whereas men talk better standing. And even had a woman stood before Benson, she could not have taken out a gun and aimed it without his looking up. A man’s reaching in his pocket is a natural action; but a woman has no pockets and no place to hide a gun except her hand-bag. And a man is always on guard when an angry woman opens a hand-bag in front of him,—the very uncertainty of women’s natures has made men suspicious of their actions when aroused. . . . But—above all—it was Benson’s bald pate and bed-room slippers that made the woman hypothesis untenable.”
“You remarked a moment ago,” said Markham, “that the murderer went there that night prepared to take heroic measures if necessary. And yet you say he planned the murder.”
“True. The two statements don’t conflict, y’ know. The murder was planned—without doubt. But the Major was willing to give his victim a last chance to save his life. My theory is this: The Major, being in a tight financial hole with State prison looming before him, and knowing that his brother had sufficient funds in the safe to save him, plotted the crime, and went to the house that night prepared to commit it. First, however, he told his brother of his predic’ment and asked for the money; and Alvin prob’bly told him to go to the devil. The Major may even have pleaded a bit in order to avoid killing him; but when the liter’ry Alvin turned to reading, he saw the futility of appealing further, and proceeded with the dire business.”
Markham smoked a while.
“Granting all you’ve said,” he remarked at length, “I still don’t see how you could know, as you asserted this morning, that the Major had planned the murder so as to throw suspicion deliberately on Captain Leacock.”
“Just as a sculptor, who thoroughly understands the principles of form and composition, can accurately supply any missing integral part of a statue,” Vance explained, “so can the psychologist who understands the human mind, supply any missing factor in a given human action. I might add, parenthetically, that all this blather about the missing arms of the Aphrodite of Melos—the Milo Venus, y’ know—is the utt’rest fiddle-faddle. Any competent artist who knew the laws of æsthetic organization could restore the arms exactly as they were originally. Such restorations are merely a matter of context,—the missing factor, d’ ye see, simply has to conform and harmonize with what is already known.”
He made one of his rare gestures of delicate emphasis.
“Now, the problem of circumventing suspicion is an important detail in every deliberated crime. And since the general conception of this particular crime was pos’tive, conclusive and concrete, it followed that each one of its component parts would be pos’tive, conclusive and concrete. Therefore, for the Major merely to have arranged things so that he himself should not be suspected, would have been too negative a conception to fit consistently with the other psychological aspects of the deed. It would have been too vague, too indirect, too indef’nite. The type of literal mind which conceived this crime would logically have provided a specific and tangible object of suspicion. Cons’quently, when the material evidence began to pile up against the Captain, and the Major waxed vehement in defending him, I knew he had been chosen as the dupe. At first, I admit, I suspected the Major of having selected Miss St. Clair as the victim; but when I learned that the presence of her gloves and hand-bag at Benson’s was only an accident, and remembered that the Major had given us Pfyfe as a source of information about the Captain’s threat, I realized that her projection into the rôle of murderer was unpremeditated.”
A little later Markham rose and stretched himself.
“Well, Vance,” he said, “your task is finished. Mine has just begun. And I need sleep.”
Before a week had passed, Major Anthony Benson was indicted for the murder of his brother. His trial before Judge Rudolph Hansacker, as you remember, created a nation-wide sensation. The Associated Press sent columns daily to its members; and for weeks the front pages of the country’s newspapers were emblazoned with spectacular reports of the proceedings. How the District Attorney’s office won the case after a bitter struggle; how, because of the indirect character of the evidence, the verdict was for murder in the second degree; and how, after a retrial in the Court of Appeals, Anthony Benson finally received a sentence of from twenty years to life,—all these facts are a matter of official and public record.
Markham personally did not appear as Public Prosecutor. Having been a life-long friend of the defendant’s, his position was an unenviable and difficult one, and no word of criticism was directed against his assignment of the case to Chief Assistant District Attorney Sullivan. Major Benson surrounded himself with an array of counsel such as is rarely seen in our criminal courts. Both Blashfield and Bauer were among the attorneys for the defense—Blashfield fulfilling the duties of the English solicitor, and Bauer acting as advocate. They fought with every legal device at their disposal, but the accumulation of evidence against their client overwhelmed them.
After Markham had been convinced of the Major’s guilt, he had made a thorough examination of the business affairs of the two brothers, and found the situation even worse than had been indicated by Stitt’s first report. The firm’s securities had been systematically appropriated for private speculations; but whereas Alvin Benson had succeeded in covering himself and making a large profit, the Major had been almost completely wiped out by his investments. Markham was able to show that the Major’s only hope of replacing the diverted securities and saving himself from criminal prosecution lay in Alvin Benson’s immediate death. It was also brought out at the trial that the Major, on the very day of the murder, had made emphatic promises which could have been kept only in the event of his gaining access to his brother’s safe. Furthermore, these promises had involved specific amounts in the other’s possession; and, in one instance, he had put up, on a forty-eight-hour note, a security already pledged—a fact which, in itself, would have exposed his hand, had his brother lived.
Miss Hoffman was a helpful and intelligent witness for the prosecution. Her knowledge of conditions at the Benson and Benson offices went far toward strengthening the case against the Major.
Mrs. Platz also testified to overhearing acrimonious arguments between the brothers. She stated that less than a fortnight before the murder the Major, after an unsuccessful attempt to borrow $50,000 from Alvin, had threatened him, saying: “If I ever have to choose between your skin and mine, it won’t be mine that’ll suffer.”
Theodore Montagu, the man who, according to the story of the elevator boy at the Chatham Arms, had returned at half past two on the night of the murder, testified that, as his taxicab turned in front of the apartment house, the head-lights flashed on a man standing in a tradesmen’s entrance across the street, and that the man looked like Major Benson. This evidence would have had little effect had not Pfyfe come forward after the arrest and admitted seeing the Major crossing Sixth Avenue at Forty-sixth Street when he had walked to Pietro’s for his drink of Haig and Haig. He explained that he had attached no importance to it at the time, thinking the Major was merely returning home from some Broadway restaurant. He himself had not been seen by the Major.
This testimony, in connection with Mr. Montagu’s, annihilated the Major’s carefully planned alibi; and though the defense contended stubbornly that both witnesses had been mistaken in their identification, the jury was deeply impressed by the evidence, especially when Assistant District Attorney Sullivan, under Vance’s tutoring, painstakingly explained, with diagrams, how the Major could have gone out and returned that night without being seen by the boy.
It was also shown that the jewels could not have been taken from the scene of the crime except by the murderer; and Vance and I were called as witnesses to the finding of them in the Major’s apartment. Vance’s demonstration of the height of the murderer was shown in court, but, curiously, it carried little weight, as the issue