Дело Бенсона

DETECTIVE STORY

S. S. Van Dine

THE BENSON 
MURDER CASE

ISBN 978-5-9925-1638-8

Ван Дайн С. С.

В17         Дело Бенсона / С. С. Ван Дайн : книга для чтения 

на английском языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 
2023. — 384 с. — (Detective Story).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1638-8.

«Дело Бенсона» ― первый роман популярного амери-

канского писателя С. С. Ван Дайна из цикла книг о частном 
детективе Фило Вэнсе. Вэнс, стильный джентльмен 
из Нью-Йорка с незаурядным интеллектом, помогает полиции 
раскрывать запутанные дела. 

Известный в городе биржевой маклер Элвин Бенсон, 

циничный и жестокий человек, убит в своем загородном 
поместье. Вокруг жертвы было много сложных интриг, 
поэтому подозреваемых тоже много ― кто же убийца? Используя 
психологический анализ личности убитого и его 
окружения, талантливый сыщик Фило Вэнс мастерски 
вычисляет преступника. 

Неадаптированный текст романа снабжен коммен-

тариями автора и редактора. Книга подойдет всем любителям 
классического детектива и английского языка 
(уровень B2 ― C1).

УДК 372.8 

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2023
Все права защищены

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93
В17

“Mr. Mason,” he said,  

“I wish to thank you for my life.”

“Sir,” said Mason, “I had no interest in your life.  

The adjustment of your problem was  

the only thing of interest to me.”

—Randolph Mason: Corrector of Destinies.

Introductory

If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the 

City of New York, you will find that the number of 
unsolved major crimes during the four years that John 
F.-X. Markham was District Attorney, was far smaller 
than under any of his predecessors’ administrations. 
Markham projected the District Attorney’s office into 
all manner of criminal investigations; and, as a result, 
many abstruse crimes on which the Police had hope-
lessly gone aground were eventually disposed of.

But although he was personally credited with the 

many important indictments and subsequent convic-
tions that he secured, the truth is that he was only an 
instrument in many of his most famous cases. The 
man who actually solved them and supplied the evi-
dence for their prosecution, was in no way connected 
with the city’s administration, and never once came 
into the public eye.

At that time I happened to be both legal advisor 

and personal friend of this other man; and it was thus 
that the strange and amazing facts of the situation 
became known to me. But not until recently have 
I been at liberty to make them public. Even now I am 
not permitted to divulge the man’s name, and, for 

that reason, I have chosen, arbitrarily, to refer to him 
throughout these ex-officio1 reports as Philo Vance.

It is, of course, possible that some of his acquaint-

ances may, through my revelations, be able to guess 
his identity; and if such should prove the case, I beg of 
them to guard that knowledge; for though he has now 
gone to Italy to live, and has given me permission to 
record the exploits of which he was the unique cen-
tral character, he has very emphatically imposed his 
anonymity upon me; and I should not like to feel that, 
through any lack of discretion or delicacy, I have been 
the cause of his secret becoming generally known.

The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s so-

lution of the notorious Benson murder which, due to 
the unexpectedness of the crime, the prominence of 
the persons involved, and the startling evidence ad-
duced, was invested with an interest rarely surpassed 
in the annals of New York’s criminal history.

This sensational case was the first of many in 

which Vance figured as a kind of amicus curiae2 in 
Markham’s investigations.

S. S. Van Dine.

New York.

1 ex officio (лат.) — досл. в силу занимаемой должности; 
зд. официальный. — Здесь и далее комментарии на русском 
языке принадлежат редактору.

2 amicus curiae (лат.) — юридический термин римского 
права, обозначающий лицо, содействующее суду

Characters Of The Book

Philo Vance
John F.-X. Markham — District Attorney of New York 
County.
Alvin H. Benson — well-known Wall Street broker 
and man-about-town, who was mysteriously mur-
dered in his home.
Major Anthony Benson — brother of the murdered 
man.
Mrs. Anna Platz — housekeeper for Alvin Benson.
Muriel St. Clair — a young singer.
Captain Philip Leacock — Miss St. Clair’s fiancé.
Leander Pfyfe — intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s.
Mrs. Paula Banning — a friend of Leander Pfyfe’s.
Elsie Hoffman — secretary of the firm of Benson and 
Benson.
Colonel Bigsby Ostrander — a retired army officer.
William H. Moriarty — an alderman, Borough of the 
Bronx.
Jack Prisco — elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms.
George G. Stitt — of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Pub-
lic Accountants.
Maurice Dinwiddie — Assistant District Attorney.
Chief Inspector O’Brien — of the Police Department 
of New York City.

William M. Moran — Commanding Officer of the 
Detective Bureau.
Ernest Heath — Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke — Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin — Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Emery — Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Ben Hanlon — Commanding Officer of Detectives 
assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Phelps — Detective assigned to District Attorney’s 
office.
Tracy — Detective assigned to District Attorney’s of-
fice.
Springer — Detective assigned to District Attorney’s 
office.
Higginbotham — Detective assigned to District At-
torney’s office.
Captain Carl Hagedorn — fire-arms expert.
Dr. Doremus — Medical Examiner.
Francis Swacker — Secretary to the District Attor-
ney.
Currie — Vance’s valet.

Chapter I

Philo Vance at Home
(Friday, June 14; 8.30 a.m.)

It happened that, on the morning of the momen-

tous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the 
murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation 
which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had 
breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was 
not unusual for me to share Vance’s luncheons and 
dinners, but to have breakfast with him was some-
thing of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was 
his habit to remain incommunicado3 until his midday 
meal.

The reason for this early meeting was a matter of 

business—or, rather, of aesthetics. On the afternoon 
of the previous day Vance had attended a preview 
of Vollard’s collection of Cézanne water-colors at the 
Kessler Galleries, and having seen several pictures 
he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early 
breakfast to give me instructions regarding their pur-
chase.

3 incommunicado англ. сленг от исп. incomunicado — лишенный 
общения, находящийся в полной изоляции

A word concerning my relationship with Vance 

is necessary to clarify my rôle4 of narrator in this 
chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in 
my family, and when my preparatory-school days 
were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course, 
to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, 
a reserved, cynical and caustic freshman who was 
the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow-
classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the 
students at the University, for his extra-scholastic 
association, I have never been able to understand 
fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: 
he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me 
with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his lik-
ing for me, however, no such basis of appeal was 
present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, 
possessed of a conservative and rather convention-
al mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, 
and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not 
impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had 
little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is 
possible that these traits found certain affinities in 
Vance’s unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the 
less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance 
as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in 
my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. 
But whatever the explanation, we were much to-

4 rôle (фр.) — роль, амплуа