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 County on the Independent Reform Ticket during
one of the city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. 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
clean-shaven, 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.
He swallowed his coffee rapidly, and was setting down the cup, when
Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked:
“I say; why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You
weren’t, by any chance, the murderer, what?”
Markham ignored Vance’s levity.
“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 behavior 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 bed-room 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 chided 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 recognized 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 favorite 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 favor, 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 lived in West Forty-eighth Street;
and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped by
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 defunct 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
dealings 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 symbolized for Markham the care-free,
exotic, gypsy 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 honors. 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 brownstone 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 patrolman 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 recognizing Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted
with great dignity.
“_Ave, Cæsar, 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 recognized 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 race-horses and a number
of mounted hunting trophies. A highly-colored 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 center table
nearly six feet long. At the side of the table nearest the hallway,
with its back to the front windows, stood a large wicker 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.
[Illustration: The plan of the ground floor of an apartment in West
Forty-eighth Street. The front door is in the southwest corner of the
building, and opens onto a vestibule, beyond which the entrance hall
runs along the west side of the building. Near the end of the hall are
stairs to the upper floor and a door to the dining-room. Halfway along
the hall, double doors on the eastern side open into a living-room,
which occupies most of the ground floor. Windows on the south wall
have iron grilles over them. A window on the north wall is locked on
the inside. Double doors on the north wall also lead into the
dining-room. In the middle of the living-room is a chair facing north,
which is labeled “Where Benson was sitting when murdered.” A mark
north of the chair is labeled “Spot from which shot was fired,” and
from this mark a line runs due south, ending at the south wall, at a
spot between the windows, labeled “Where bullet struck wainscot.” On
the east wall is a fireplace, and a spot on the mantel is labeled
“Where woman’s handbag was found.”]
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
center-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.*
* The book was O. Henry’s _Strictly Business_, and the
place at which it was being held open was, curiously
enough, the story entitled “A Municipal Report.”
He had been shot through the forehead from in 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 hemorrhage 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 bed-room
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 iron
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 thickset man in
blue serge and a derby hat, stood with arms a-kimbo scrutinizing 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
the sheer power of concentration, to probe the secret of the murder.
Another man, of unusual mien, was standing before the rear window,
with a jeweller’s magnifying glass in his eye, inspecting a small
object held in the palm of his hand. From pictures I had seen of him I
knew he was Captain Carl Hagedorn, the most famous fire-arms expert in
America. He was a large, cumbersome, broad-shouldered man of about
fifty; and his black shiny clothes were several sizes too large for
him. His coat hitched up behind, and in front hung half way down to
his knees; and his trousers were baggy and lay over his ankles in
grotesquely comic folds. His head was round and abnormally large, and
his ears seemed sunken into his skull. His mouth was entirely hidden
by a scraggly, grey-shot moustache, all the hairs of which grew
downwards, forming a kind of lambrequin to his lips. Captain Hagedorn
had been connected with the New York Police Department for thirty
years, and though his appearance and manner were ridiculed at
Headquarters, he was profoundly respected. His word on any point
pertaining to fire-arms and gunshot wounds was accepted as final by
Headquarters men.
In the rear of the room, near the dining-room door, stood two other
men talking earnestly together. One was Inspector William M. Moran,
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau; the other, Sergeant Ernest
Heath of the Homicide Bureau, of whom Markham had already spoken to
us.
As we entered the room in the wake of Chief Inspector O’Brien everyone
ceased his occupation for a moment and looked at the District Attorney
in a spirit of uneasy, but respectful, recognition. Only Captain
Hagedorn, after a cursory squint at Markham, returned to the
inspection of the tiny object in his hand, with an abstracted
unconcern which brought a faint smile to Vance’s lips.
Inspector Moran and Sergeant Heath came forward with stolid dignity;
and after the ceremony of hand-shaking (which I later observed to be a
kind of religious rite among the police and the members of the
District Attorney’s staff), Markham introduced Vance and me, and
briefly explained our presence. The Inspector bowed pleasantly to
indicate his acceptance of the intrusion, but I noticed that Heath
ignored Markham’s explanation, and proceeded to treat us as if we were
non-existent.
Inspector Moran was a man of different quality from the others in the
room. He was about sixty, with white hair and a brown moustache, and
was immaculately dressed. He looked more like a successful Wall Street
broker of the better class than a police official.*
* Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the
president of a large up-State bank that had failed during
the panic of 1907, and during the Gaynor Administration
had been seriously considered for the post of Police
Commissioner.
“I’ve assigned Sergeant Heath to the case, Mr. Markham,” he explained
in a low, well-modulated voice. “It looks as though we were in for a
bit of trouble before it’s finished. Even the Chief Inspector thought
it warranted his lending the moral support of his presence to the
preliminary rounds. He has been here since eight o’clock.”
Inspector O’Brien had left us immediately upon entering the room, and
now stood between the front windows, watching the proceedings with a
grave, indecipherable face.
“Well, I think I’ll be going,” Moran added. “They had me out of bed at
seven-thirty, and I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I won’t be needed
anyway now that you’re here. . . . Good-morning.” And again he shook
hands.
When he had gone Markham turned to the Assistant District Attorney.
“Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in
the wood, and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to
them while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”
Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the
opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up
excitement.
As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the
murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard
Heath say in a sullen voice:
“I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”
Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with
interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the Police
Department and the District Attorney’s office.
Markham looked at Heath with a slow gracious smile, and shook his
head.
“No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want
that relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be
here now if Major Benson hadn’t ’phoned me and asked me to lend a
hand. And I particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty
generally known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the Major is an old
friend of mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with
the case is kept quiet.”
Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had,
in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who
were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he
personally liked the District Attorney.
“If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the
Police Department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to
see the reporters. . . . And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly,
“if there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that,
too.”
“Fair enough,” assented Heath.
“And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.