The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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home. I feared that Mr. Pfyfe had seen him, and I told him it would be safer to bring his pistol to me and to say, if questioned, that he’d lost it in France. . . . You see, I really thought he had shot Mr. Benson and was—well, lying like a gentleman, to spare my feelings. Then, when he took the pistol from me with the purpose of throwing it away altogether, I was even more certain of it.”
She smiled faintly at Markham.
“That was why I refused to answer your questions. I wanted you to think that maybe I had done it, so you’d not suspect Captain Leacock.”
“But he wasn’t lying at all,” said Vance.
“I know now that he wasn’t. And I should have known it before. He’d never have brought the pistol to me if he’d been guilty.”
A film came over her eyes.
“And—poor boy!—he confessed because he thought that I was guilty.”
“That’s precisely the harrowin’ situation,” nodded Vance. “But where did he think you had obtained a weapon?”
“I know many army men—friends of his and of Major Benson’s. And last summer at the mountains I did considerable pistol practice for the fun of it. Oh, the idea was reasonable enough.”
Vance rose and made a courtly bow.
“You’ve been most gracious—and most helpful,” he said. “Y’ see, Mr. Markham had various theories about the murder. The first, I believe, was that you alone were the Madam Borgia. The second was that you and the Captain did the deed together—à quatre mains, as it were. The third was that the Captain pulled the trigger a cappella. And the legal mind is so exquisitely developed that it can believe in several conflicting theories at the same time. The sad thing about the present case is that Mr. Markham still leans toward the belief that both of you are guilty, individually and collectively. I tried to reason with him before coming here; but I failed. Therefore, I insisted upon his hearing from your own charming lips your story of the affair.”
He went up to Markham who sat glaring at him with lips compressed.
“Well, old chap,” he remarked pleasantly, “surely you are not going to persist in your obsession that either Miss St. Clair or Captain Leacock is guilty, what? . . . And won’t you relent and unshackle the Captain as I begged you to?”
He extended his arms in a theatrical gesture of supplication.
Markham’s wrath was at the breaking-point, but he got up deliberately and, going to the woman, held out his hand.
“Miss St. Clair,” he said kindly—and again I was impressed by the bigness of the man—, “I wish to assure you that I have dismissed the idea of your guilt, and also Captain Leacock’s, from what Mr. Vance terms my incredibly rigid and unreceptive mind. . . . I forgive him, however, because he has saved me from doing you a very grave injustice. And I will see that you have your Captain back as soon as the papers can be signed for his release.”
As we walked out onto Riverside Drive, Markham turned savagely on Vance.
“So! I was keeping her precious Captain locked up, and you were pleading with me to let him go! You know damned well I didn’t think either one of them was guilty—you—you lounge lizard!”
Vance sighed.
“Dear me! Don’t you want to be of any help at all in this case?” he asked sadly.
“What good did it do you to make an ass of me in front of that woman?” spluttered Markham. “I can’t see that you got anywhere, with all your tomfoolery.”
“What!” Vance registered utter amazement. “The testimony you’ve heard to-day is going to help immeasurably in convicting the culprit. Furthermore, we now know about the gloves and hand-bag, and who the lady was that called at Benson’s office, and what Miss St. Clair did between twelve and one, and why she dined alone with Alvin, and why she first had tea with him, and how the jewels came to be there, and why the Captain took her his gun and then threw it away, and why he confessed. . . . My word! Doesn’t all this knowledge soothe you? It rids the situation of so much débris.”
He stopped and lit a cigarette.
“The really important thing the lady told us was that her friends knew she invariably departed at midnight when she went out of an evening. Don’t overlook or belittle that point, old dear; it’s most pert’nent. I told you long ago that the person who shot Benson knew she was dining with him that night.”
“You’ll be telling me next you know who killed him,” Markham scoffed.
Vance sent a ring of smoke circling upward.
“I’ve known all along who shot the blighter.”
Markham snorted derisively.
“Indeed! And when did this revelation burst upon you?”
“Oh, not more than five minutes after I entered Benson’s house that first morning,” replied Vance.
“Well, well! Why didn’t you confide in me, and avoid all these trying activities?”
“Quite impossible,” Vance explained jocularly. “You were not ready to receive my apocryphal knowledge. It was first necess’ry to lead you patiently by the hand out of the various dark forests and morasses into which you insisted upon straying. You’re so dev’lishly unimag’native, don’t y’ know.”
A taxicab was passing, and he hailed it.
“Eighty-seven West Forty-eighth Street,” he directed.
Then he took Markham’s arm confidingly.
“Now for a brief chat with Mrs. Platz. And then—then I shall pour into your ear all my maidenly secrets.”
CHAPTER XXI
SARTORIAL REVELATIONS
(Wednesday, June 19; 5.30 p.m.)
The housekeeper regarded our visit that afternoon with marked uneasiness. Though she was a large powerful woman, her body seemed to have lost some of its strength, and her face showed signs of prolonged anxiety. Snitkin informed us, when we entered, that she had carefully read every newspaper account of the progress of the case, and had questioned him interminably on the subject.
She entered the living-room with scarcely an acknowledgment of our presence, and took the chair Vance placed for her like a woman resigning herself to a dreaded but inevitable ordeal. When Vance looked at her keenly, she gave him a frightened glance and turned her face away, as if, in the second their eyes met, she had read his knowledge of some secret she had been jealously guarding.
Vance began his questioning without prelude or protasis.
“Mrs. Platz, was Mr. Benson very particular about his toupee—that is, did he often receive his friends without having it on?”
The woman appeared relieved.
“Oh, no, sir—never.”
“Think back, Mrs. Platz. Has Mr. Benson never, to your knowledge, been in anyone’s company without his toupee?”
She was silent for some time, her brows contracted.
“Once I saw him take off his wig and show it to Colonel Ostrander, an elderly gentleman who used to call here very often. But Colonel Ostrander was an old friend of his. He told me they lived together once.”
“No one else?”
Again she frowned thoughtfully.
“No,” she said, after several minutes.
“What about the tradespeople?”
“He was very particular about