The Benson Murder Case / Дело Бенсона. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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 office.

Springer – Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

Higginbotham – Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

Captain Carl Hagedorn – fire-arms expert.

Dr. Doremus – Medical Examiner.

Francis Swacker – Secretary to the District Attorney.

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 momentous 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 something of an occasion.

He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado[3 - incommunicado англ. сленг от исп. incomunicado — лишенный общения, находящийся в полной изоляции] 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 Cеzanne 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 purchase.

A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my r?le[4 - r?le (фр.) —роль, амплуа] 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 liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present.