The Philo Vance Megapack. S.S. Van Dine
probably aware that your gloves and handbag were found in Mr. Benson’s house the morning after he was shot.”
“I can understand how you might have traced the handbag to me,” she said; “but how did you arrive at the conclusion that the gloves were mine?”
Markham looked up sharply. “Do you mean to say the gloves are not yours?”
“Oh, no.” She gave him another wintry smile. “I merely wondered how you knew they belonged to me, since you couldn’t have known either my taste in gloves or the size I wore.”
“They’re your gloves, then?”
“If they are Tréfousse, size five-and-three-quarters, of white kid and elbow length, they are certainly mine. And I’d so like to have them back, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry,” said Markham, “but it is necessary that I keep them for the present.”
She dismissed the matter with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.
Markham instantly opened a drawer of his desk and took out a box of Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
“I have my own, thank you,” she informed him. “But I would so appreciate my holder. I’ve missed it horribly.”
Markham hesitated. He was manifestly annoyed by the woman’s attitude. “I’ll be glad to lend it to you,” he compromised; and reaching into another drawer of his desk, he laid the holder on the table before her.
“Now, Miss St. Clair,” he said, resuming his gravity of manner, “will you tell me how these personal articles of yours happened to be in Mr. Benson’s living room?”
“No, Mr. Markham, I will not,” she answered.
“Do you realize the serious construction your refusal places upon the circumstances?”
“I really hadn’t given it much thought.” Her tone was indifferent.
“It would be well if you did,” Markham advised her. “Your position is not an enviable one; and the presence of your belongings in Mr. Benson’s room is, by no means, the only thing that connects you directly with the crime.”
The woman raised her eyes inquiringly, and again the enigmatic smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps you have sufficient evidence to accuse me of the murder?”
Markham ignored this question. “You were well acquainted with Mr. Benson, I believe?”
“The finding of my handbag and gloves in his apartment might lead one to assume as much, mightn’t it?” she parried.
“He was, in fact, much interested in you?” persisted Markham.
She made a moue and sighed. “Alas, yes! Too much for my peace of mind.… Have I been brought here to discuss the attentions this gentleman paid me?”
Again Markham ignored her query. “Where were you, Miss St. Clair, between the time you left the Marseilles at midnight and the time you arrived home—which, I understand, was after one o’clock?”
“You are simply wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You seem to know everything.… Well, I can only say that during that time I was on my way home.”
“Did it take you an hour to go from Fortieth Street to Eighty-first and Riverside Drive?”
“Just about, I should say—a few minutes more or less, perhaps.”
“How do you account for that?” Markham was becoming impatient.
“I can’t account for it,” she said, “except by the passage of time. Time does fly, doesn’t it, Mr. Markham?”
“By your attitude you are only working detriment to yourself,” Markham warned her, with a show of irritation. “Can you not see the seriousness of your position? You are known to have dined with Mr. Benson, to have left the restaurant at midnight, and to have arrived at your own apartment after one o’clock. At twelve-thirty, Mr. Benson was shot; and your personal articles were found in the same room the morning after.”
“It looks terribly suspicious, I know,” she admitted, with whimsical seriousness. “And I’ll tell you this, Mr. Markham: if my thoughts could have killed Mr. Benson, he would have died long ago. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead—there’s a saying about it beginning ‘de mortuis,’ isn’t there?—but the truth is, I had reason to dislike Mr. Benson exceedingly.”
“Then, why did you go to dinner with him?”
“I’ve asked myself the same question a dozen times since,” she confessed dolefully. “We women are such impulsive creatures—always doing things we shouldn’t.… But I know what you’re thinking: if I had intended to shoot him, that would have been a natural preliminary. Isn’t that what’s in your mind? I suppose all murderesses do go to dinner with their victims first.”
While she spoke she opened her vanity case and looked at her reflection in its mirror. She daintily adjusted several imaginary stray ends of her abundant dark brown hair, and touched her arched eyebrows gently with her little finger as if to rectify some infinitesimal disturbance in their penciled contour. Then she tilted her head, regarded herself appraisingly, and returned her gaze to the district attorney only as she came to the end of her speech. Her actions had perfectly conveyed to her listeners the impression that the subject of the conversation was, in her scheme of things, of secondary importance to her personal appearance. No words could have expressed her indifference so convincingly as had her little pantomime.
Markham was becoming exasperated. A different type of district attorney would no doubt have attempted to use the pressure of his office to force her into a more amenable frame of mind. But Markham shrank instinctively from the bludgeoning, threatening methods of the ordinary public prosecutor, especially in his dealings with women. In the present case, however, had it not been for Vance’s strictures at the club, he would no doubt have taken a more aggressive stand. But it was evident he was laboring under a burden of uncertainty superinduced by Vance’s words and augmented by the evasive deportment of the woman herself.
After a moment’s silence he asked grimly, “You did considerable speculating through the firm of Benson and Benson, did you not?”
A faint ring of musical laughter greeted this question. “I see that the dear major has been telling tales.… Yes, I’ve been gambling most extravagantly. And I had no business to do it. I’m afraid I’m avaricious.”
“And is it not true that you’ve lost heavily of late—that, in fact, Mr. Alvin Benson called upon you for additional margin and finally sold out your securities?”
“I wish to Heaven it were not true,” she lamented, with a look of simulated tragedy. Then: “Am I supposed to have done away with Mr. Benson out of sordid revenge or as an act of just retribution?” She smiled archly and waited expectantly, as if her question had been part of a guessing game.
Markham’s eyes hardened as he coldly enunciated his next words.
“Is it not a fact that Captain Philip Leacock owned just such a pistol as Mr. Benson was killed with—a .45 army Colt automatic?”
At the mention of her fiancé’s name she stiffened perceptibly and caught her breath. The part she had been playing fell from her, and a faint flush suffused her cheeks and extended to her forehead. But almost immediately she had reassumed her role of playful indifference.
“I never inquired into the make or caliber of Captain Leacock’s firearms,” she returned carelessly.
“And is it not a fact,” pursued Markham’s imperturbable voice, “that Captain Leacock lent you his pistol when he called at your apartment on the morning before the murder?”
“It’s most ungallant of you, Mr. Markham,” she reprimanded him coyly, “to inquire into the personal relations of an engaged couple; for I am betrothed to Captain Leacock—though