The Benson Murder Case

“Mr. Mason,” he said, “I wish to thank you for my life.”

“Sir,” said Mason, “I had no interest in your life. The adjustment of your problem was the only thing of interest to me.”

Randolph Mason: Corrector of Destinies

Publisher’s Note

It gives us considerable pleasure to be able to offer to the public the “inside” record of those of former District Attorney Markham’s criminal cases in which Mr. Philo Vance figured so effectively. The true inwardness of these famous cases has never before been revealed; for Mr. S. S. Van Dine, Mr. Vance’s lawyer and almost constant companion, being the only person who possessed a complete record of the facts, has only recently been permitted to make them public.

After inspecting Mr. Van Dine’s voluminous notes, we decided to publish The Benson Murder Case as the first of the series—not because it was the most interesting and startling, nor yet the most complicated and dramatic from the fictional point of view, but because, coming first chronologically, it explains how Mr. Philo Vance happened to become involved in criminal matters, and also because it possesses certain features that reveal very clearly Mr. Vance’s unique analytic methods of crime detection.

Introductory

If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the City of New York, you will find that the number of unsolved major crimes during the four years that John F.-X. Markham was District Attorney, was far smaller than under any of his predecessors’ administrations. Markham projected the District Attorney’s office into all manner of criminal investigations; and, as a result, many abstruse crimes on which the Police had hopelessly gone aground, were eventually disposed of.

But although he was personally credited with the many important indictments and subsequent convictions that he secured, the truth is that he was only an instrument in many of his most famous cases. The man who actually solved them and supplied the evidence for their prosecution, was in no way connected with the city’s administration, and never once came into the public eye.

At that time I happened to be both legal advisor and personal friend of this other man; and it was thus that the strange and amazing facts of the situation became known to me. But not until recently have I been at liberty to make them public. Even now I am not permitted to divulge the man’s name, and, for that reason, I have chosen, arbitrarily, to refer to him throughout these ex-officio reports as Philo Vance.

It is, of course, possible that some of his acquaintances may, through my revelations, be able to guess his identity; and if such should prove the case, I beg of them to guard that knowledge; for though he has now gone to Italy to live, and has given me permission to record the exploits of which he was the unique central character, he has very emphatically imposed his anonymity upon me; and I should not like to feel that, through any lack of discretion or delicacy, I have been the cause of his secret becoming generally known.

The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the notorious Benson murder which, due to the unexpectedness of the crime, the prominence of the persons involved, and the startling evidence adduced, was invested with an interest rarely surpassed in the annals of New York’s criminal history.

This sensational case was the first of many in which Vance figured as a kind of amicus curiae in Markham’s investigations.

Characters of the Book

• Philo Vance.

• John F.-X. Markham. District Attorney of New York County

• Alvin H. Benson. Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home

• Major Anthony Benson. Brother of the murdered man

• Mrs. Anna Platz. Housekeeper for Alvin Benson

• Muriel St. Clair. A young singer

• Captain Philip Leacock. Miss St. Clair’s fiancé

• Leander Pfyfe. Intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s

• Mrs. Paula Banning. A friend of Leander Pfyfe’s

• Elsie Hoffman. Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson

• Colonel Bigsby Ostrander. A retired army officer

• William H. Moriarty. An alderman, Borough of the Bronx

• Jack Prisco. Elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms

• George G. Stitt. Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants

• Maurice Dinwiddie. Assistant District Attorney

• Chief Inspector O’Brien. Of the Police Department of New York City

• William M. Moran. Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau

• Ernest Heath. Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau

• Burke. Detective of the Homicide Bureau

• Snitkin. Detective of the Homicide Bureau

• Emery. Detective of the Homicide Bureau

• Ben Hanlon. Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney’s office

• Phelps. Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

• Tracy. Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

• Springer. Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

• Higginbotham. Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

• Captain Carl Hagedorn. Firearms expert

• Dr. Doremus. Medical Examiner

• Francis Swacker. Secretary to the District Attorney

• Currie. Vance’s valet