The Benson Murder Case / Дело Бенсона. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 32
“Regard the unsolved, or successful, crimes that are taking place every day,” Vance continued, disregarding the other’s irony, “—crimes which completely baffle the best detectives in the business, what? The fact is, the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by stupid people. That’s why, whenever a man of even mod’rate sagacity decides to commit a crime, he accomplishes it with but little diff’culty, and fortified with the pos’tive assurance of his immunity to discovery.”
“Undetected crimes,” scornfully submitted Markham, “result, in the main, from official bad luck—not from superior criminal cleverness.”
“Bad luck”—Vance’s voice was almost dulcet—“is merely a defensive and self-consoling synonym for inefficiency. A man with ingenuity and brains is not harassed by bad luck. … No, Markham old dear; unsolved crimes are simply crimes which have been intelligently planned and executed. And, d’ ye see, it happens that the Benson murder falls into that categ’ry. Therefore, when, after a few hours’ investigation, you say you’re pretty sure who committed it, you must pardon me if I take issue with you.”
He paused and took a few meditative puffs on his cigarette.
“The factitious and casuistic methods of deduction you chaps pursue are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now plotting to take away.”
Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.
“It so happens—and I’m speaking ex cathedra[49]—” he proclaimed defiantly, “that I come pretty near having the goods on your ‘unfortunate young lady’.”
Vance was unmoved.
“And yet, y’ know,” he observed drily, “no woman could possibly have done it.”
I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost spluttered.
“A woman couldn’t have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?”
“Quite so,” Vance rejoined placidly: “not if she herself swore to it and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather pompously, incontrovertible evidence.”
“Ah!” There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham’s tone. “I am to understand then that you even regard confessions as valueless?”
“Yes, my dear Justinian,” the other responded, with an air of complacency; “I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they are worse than valueless—they’re downright misleading. The fact that occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman’s prepost’rously overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable.”
Markham grunted disdainfully.
“Why should any person confess something to his detriment unless he felt that the truth had been found out, or was likely to be found out?”
“’Pon my word, Markham, you astound me! Permit me to murmur, privatissime et gratis[50], into your innocent ear that there are many other presumable motives for confessing. A confession may be the result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry, or what the psycho-analysts call the inferiority complex, or delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a perverted egotism, or sheer vanity, or any other of a hundred causes. Confessions are the most treach’rous and unreliable of all forms of evidence; and even the silly and unscientific law repudiates them in murder cases unless substantiated by other evidence.”