Free The Benson Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine Page B

handkerchief, and then dash off on a wild chase with your eternal
Ecce signum!
’Pon my word, it’s as if you chaps were all under the spell of shillin’ shockers. Won’t you ever learn that crimes can’t be solved by deductions based merely on material clues and circumst’ntial evidence?”
    I think Markham was as much surprised as I at this sudden criticism; yet we both knew Vance well enough to realise that, despite his placid and almost flippant tone, there was a serious purpose behind his words.
    â€œWould you advocate ignoring all the tangible evidence of a crime?” asked Markham, a bit patronisingly.
    â€œMost emphatically,” Vance declared calmly. “It’s not only worthless, but dangerous…. The great trouble with you chaps, d’ye see, is that you approach every crime with a fixed and unshakable assumption that the criminal is either half-witted or a colossal bungler. I say, has it never by any chance occurred to you that if a detective could see a clue, the criminal would also have seen it, and would either have concealed it or disguised it, if he had not wanted it found? And have you never paused to consider that anyone clever enough to plan and execute a successful crime these days, is,
ipso facto
, clever enough to manufacture whatever clues suit his purpose? Your detective seems wholly unwilling to admit that the surface appearance of a crime may be delib’rately deceptive, or that the clues may have been planted for the def’nite purpose of misleading him.”
    â€œI’m afraid,” Markham pointed out, with an air of indulgent irony, “that we’d convict very few criminals if we were to ignore all indicatory evidence, cogent circumstances and irresistible inferences…. As a rule, you know, crimes are not witnessed by outsiders.”
    â€œThat’s your fundamental error, don’t y’know,” Vance observed impassively. “Every crime is witnessed by outsiders, just as is every work of art. The fact that no one sees the criminal, or the artist, actu’lly at work, is wholly incons’quential. The modern investigator of crime would doubtless refuse to believe that Rubens painted the “Descent from the Cross” in the Cathedral at Antwerp if there was sufficient circumst’ntial evidence to indicate that he had been away on diplomatic business, for instance, at the time it was painted. And yet, my dear fellow, such a conclusion would be preposterous. Even if the infrences to the contr’ry were so irresistible as to be legally overpowering, the picture itself would prove conclusively that Rubens did paint it. Why? For the simple reason, d’ye see, that no one but Rubens could have painted it. It bears the indelible imprint of his personality and genius—and his alone.”
    â€œI’m not an aesthetician,” Markham reminded him, a trifle testily. “I’m merely a practical lawyer, and when it comes to determining the authorship of a crime, I prefer tangible evidence to metaphysical hypotheses.”
    â€œYour pref’rence, my dear fellow,” Vance returned blandly, “will inev’tably involve you in all manner of embarrassing errors.”
    He slowly lit another cigarette, and blew a wreath of smoke towards the ceiling.
    â€œConsider, for example, your conclusions in the present murder case,” he went on in his emotionless drawl. “You are labouring under the grave misconception that you know the person who prob’bly killed the unspeakable Benson. You admitted as much to the Major; and you told him you had nearly enough evidence to ask for an indictment. No doubt, you do possess a number of what the learned Solons of to-day regard as convincing clues. But the truth is,—don’t y’know, you haven’t your eye on the guilty person at all. You’re about to bedevil some poor girl who had nothing whatever to do with the