The Benson Murder Case Read Free

ideaof the man’s
penchants
and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.
    Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line:
C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute
. And he meant it literally.
    Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—an heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the
poseur
about him.
    He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits; 2 moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather thanthe scholar’s, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Banymore recently in
Hamlet
I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of
Cœsar and Cleopatra
played by Forbes Robertson, I received a similar impression. 3
    Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doing things well without any extensive practise. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played in our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.
    In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favourite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.
    Incidentally, he was one of the most uncanny poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.
    Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was