“Y’ know, you underestimate the importance of your ventral pleasures,” pursued Vance. “Eating is the one infallible guide to a people’s intellectual advancement, as well as the inev’table gauge of the individual’s temp’rament. The savage cooked and ate like a savage. In the early days of the human race, mankind was cursed with one vast epidemic of indigestion. There’s where his devils and demons and ideas of hell came from: they were the nightmares of his dyspepsia. Then, as man began to master the technique of cooking, he became civilized; and when he achieved the highest pinnacles of the culin’ry art, he also achieved the highest pinnacles of cultural and intellectual glory. When the art of the gourmet retrogressed, so did man. The tasteless, standardized cookery of America is typical of our decadence. A perfectly blended soup, Markham, is more ennoblin’ than Beethoven’s C-minor Symphony. …”
Markham listened stolidly to Vance’s chatter during breakfast. He made several attempts to bring up the subject of the crime, but Vance glibly ignored each essay. It was not until Currie had cleared away the dishes that he referred to the object of Markham’s visit.
“Did you bring the alibi reports?” was his first question.
Markham nodded.
“And it took me two hours to find Heath after you’d gone last night.”
“Sad,” breathed Vance.
He went to the desk, and took a closely written double sheet of foolscap from one of the compartments.
“I wish you’d glance this over, and give me your learned opinion,” he said, handing the paper to Markham. “I prepared it last night after the concert.”
I later took possession of the document, and filed it with my other notes and papers pertaining to the Benson case. The following is a verbatim copy:
Hypothesis
Mrs. Anna Platz shot and killed Alvin Benson on the night of June 13th.
Place
She lived in the house, and admitted being there at the time the shot was fired.
Opportunity
She was alone in the house with Benson.
All the windows were either barred or locked on the inside. The front door was locked. There was no other means of ingress.
Her presence in the living-room was natural: she might have entered ostensibly to ask Benson a domestic question.
Her standing directly in front of him would not necessarily have caused him to look up. Hence, his reading attitude.
Who else could have come so close to him for the purpose of shooting him, without attracting his attention?
He would not have cared how he appeared before his housekeeper. He had become accustomed to being seen by her without his teeth and toupee and in négligé condition.
Living in the house, she was able to choose a propitious moment for the crime.
Time
She waited up for him. Despite her denial, he might have told her when he would return.
When he came in alone and changed to his smoking-jacket, she knew he was not expecting any late visitors.
She chose a time shortly after his return because it would appear that he had brought someone home with him, and that this other person had killed him.
Means
She used Benson’s own gun. Benson undoubtedly had more than one; for he would have been more likely to keep a gun in his bedroom than in his living-room; and since a Smith and Wesson was found in the living-room, there probably was another in the bedroom.
Being his housekeeper, she knew of the gun upstairs. After he had gone down to the living-room to read, she secured it, and took it with her, concealed under her apron.
She threw the gun away or hid it after the shooting. She had all night in which to dispose of it.
She was frightened when asked what firearms Benson kept about the house, for she was not sure whether or not we knew of the gun in the bedroom.
Motive
She took the position of housekeeper because she feared Benson’s conduct toward her daughter. She always listened when her daughter came to his house at night to work.
Recently she discovered that Benson had dishonorable intentions, and believed her daughter to be in imminent danger.
A mother who would sacrifice herself for her daughter’s future, as she has done, would not hesitate at killing to save her.
And: there are the jewels. She has them hidden and is keeping them for her daughter. Would Benson have gone out and left them on the table? And if he had put them away, who but she, familiar with the house and having plenty of time, could have found them?
Conduct
She lied about St. Clair’s coming to tea, explaining later that she knew St. Clair could not have had anything to do with the crime. Was this feminine intuition? No. She could know St. Clair was innocent only because she herself was guilty. She was too motherly to want an innocent person suspected.
She was markedly frightened yesterday when her daughter’s name was mentioned, because she feared the discovery of the relationship might reveal her motive for shooting Benson.
She admitted hearing the shot, because, if she had denied it, a test might have proved that a shot in the living-room would have sounded loudly in her room; and this would have aroused suspicion against her. Does a person, when awakened, turn on the lights and determine the exact hour? And if she had heard a report which sounded like a shot being fired in the house, would she not have investigated, or given an alarm?
When first interviewed, she showed plainly she disliked Benson.
Her apprehension has been pronounced each time she has been questioned.
She is the hardheaded, shrewd, determined German type, who could both plan and perform such a crime.
Height
She is about five feet, ten inches tall—the demonstrated height of the murderer.
Markham read this précis through several times—he was fully fifteen minutes at the task—and when he had finished he sat silent for ten minutes more. Then he rose and walked up and down the room.
“Not a fancy legal document, that,” remarked Vance. “But I think even a Grand Juror could understand it. You,
