The Benson Murder Case

you irresistibly to your victim that you’ll need me most, what?”

And the remark, though intended merely as a good-natured sally, proved strangely prophetic.

Endnotes

1. As a matter of fact, the same watercolors that Vance obtained for $250 and $300, were bringing three times as much four years later. ↩︎

2. I am thinking particularly of Bronzino’s portraits of Pietro de’ Medici and Cosimo de’ Medici, in the National Gallery, and of Vasari’s medallion portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Vecchio Palazzo, Florence. ↩︎

3. Once when Vance was suffering from sinusitis, he had an X-ray photograph of his head made; and the accompanying chart described him as a “marked dolichocephalic” and a “disharmonious Nordic.” It also contained the following data:⁠—cephalic index 75; nose, leptorhine, with an index of 48; facial angle, 85°; vertical index, 72; upper facial index, 54; interpupilary width, 67; chin, masognathous, with an index of 103; sella turcica, abnormally large. ↩︎

4. “Culture,” Vance said to me shortly after I had met him, “is polyglot; and the knowledge of many tongues is essential to an understanding of the world’s intellectual and aesthetic achievements. Especially are the Greek and Latin classics vitiated by translation.” I quote the remark here because his omnivorous reading in languages other than English, coupled with his amazingly retentive memory, had a tendency to affect his own speech. And while it may appear to some that his speech was at times pedantic, I have tried, throughout these chronicles, to quote him literally, in the hope of presenting a portrait of the man as he was. ↩︎

5. 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.” ↩︎

6. Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of a large upstate bank that had failed during the panic of 1907, and during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the post of Police Commissioner. ↩︎

7. Vance’s eyes were slightly bifocal. His right eye was 1.2 astigmatic, whereas his left eye was practically normal. ↩︎

8. Even the famous Elwell case, which came several years later and bore certain points of similarity to the Benson case, created no greater sensation, despite the fact that Elwell was more widely known than Benson, and the persons involved were more prominent socially. Indeed, the Benson case was referred to several times in descriptions of the Elwell case; and one anti-administration paper regretted editorially that John F.-X. Markham was no longer District Attorney of New York. ↩︎

9. Vance, who had lived many years in England, frequently said “ain’t”⁠—a contraction which is regarded there more leniently than in this country. He also pronounced “ate” as if it were spelled “et;” and I can not remember his ever using the word “stomach” or “bug,” both of which are under the social ban in England. ↩︎

10. The following conversation in which Vance explains his psychological methods of criminal analysis, is, of course, set down from memory. However, a proof of this passage was sent to him with a request that he revise and alter it in whatever manner he chose; so that, as it now stands, it describes Vance’s theory in practically his own words. ↩︎

11. I don’t know what case Vance was referring to; but there are several instances of this device on record, and writers of detective fiction have often used it. The latest instance is to be found in G. K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown, in the story entitled “The Wrong Shape.” ↩︎

12. It was Pearson and Goring who, about twenty years ago, made an extensive investigation and tabulation of professional criminals in England, the results of which showed (1) that criminal careers began mostly between the ages of 16 and 21; (2) that over ninety percent of criminals were mentally normal; and (3) that more criminals had criminal older brothers than criminal fathers. ↩︎

13. Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., former Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, London, writing in The Saturday Evening Post several years after this conversation, said: “Take, for example, the proverb that murder will out, which is employed whenever one out of many thousands of undiscovered murderers is caught through a chance coincidence that captures the popular imagination. It is because murder will not out that the pleasant shock of surprise when it does out calls for a proverb to enshrine the phenomenon. The poisoner who is brought to justice has almost invariably proved to have killed other victims without exciting suspicion until he has grown careless.” ↩︎

14. In “Popular Fallacies About Crime” (Saturday Evening Post: April 21, 1923, p. 8) Sir Basil Thomson also upheld this point of view. ↩︎

15. For years the famous Concert Champêtre in the Louvre was officially attributed to Titian. Vance, however, took it upon himself to convince the Curator, M. Lepelletier, that it was a Giorgione, with the result that the painting is now credited to that artist. ↩︎

16. Obviously a reference to Tetrazzini’s performance in La Bohème at the Manhattan Opera House in 1908. ↩︎

17. This quotation from Ecclesiastes reminds me that Vance regularly read the Old Testament. “When I weary of the professional liter’ry man,” he once said, “I find stimulation in the majestic prose of the Bible. If the moderns feel that they simply must write, they should be made to spend at least two hours a day with the Biblical historians.” ↩︎

18. The book⁠—or a part of it⁠—has, I believe, been recently translated into English. ↩︎

19. The boy was Jack Prisco, of 621 Kelly Street. ↩︎

20. Obviously Mrs. Platz.