“See, one day, after the elevator boy had dropped the courier at Marion’s floor, he had to come right back up with another resident of the floor. When the elevator door opened, he saw the guy using a key to get into Marion’s apartment. That’s when he thought things smelled fishy.”
“Any other visitors?”
“Just delivery people, the usual. And lots of dinners being sent up from a couple of restaurants down the block.”
Mr. Benchley noted, “You said you got a couple of telephone tips.”
“Oh, yeah, I did,” said Frank. “The other was a woman, telephoned that she saw Myrtle Pierce in the company of Marion Fields having lunch together in a little Bavarian restaurant last Thursday.”
“What?” bellowed Aleck. “If that was so, you’ve held the big story for last, you sonofabitch!”
“I tell my stories in the order I so choice, fat boy!” returned Frank, used to Aleck’s bluster. He took a dainty sip from his cup of gin and tonic, his pinkie finger extended affectedly, then waved for the waiter to bring him another.
“As you were saying before you were rudely interrupted, turkey neck,” said Mr. Benchley in an attempt to further lighten the mood.
Frank ran a finger under his heavily starched shirt collar and then straightened his tie. “The woman in question—”
“Which one?” demanded Aleck. “Marion, Myrtle, or the caller?”
“The caller, and please do not interrupt me when I am on a roll or I will hurt you, Aleck.”
“Get rough and I shall sit on you; see how that feels, you fawn’s ass.”
“Boys!”
I was used to their affectionate verbal wrestling, though it got silly at times. Had Harold Ross been with us, the two would have abused him, instead, as the brunt of their jokes and adolescent name-calling. As it was they only had each other to push around.
“Mrs. Parker doesn’t approve, duck lips.”
“Oh, all right, then, carry-on, pogo stick.”
“Thank you, lard-head.”
I may have said that each, in his own right, was brilliant, but I never said they were mature.
“Very well. The caller informed me that she is the lunchtime waitress at this place on the east side, and that she immediately recognized Myrtle, because this waitress, see, is an aspiring thespian—”
“We don’t care what her sexual preferences are, old boy,” said Mr. Benchley.
“Quite hysterical, Bob; you need a new gag man. Anyway, she’d seen Myrtle on stage before she gave it all up and married Reggie. The other woman with Myrtle, she didn’t know, but thought she looked an awful lot like Mary Astor.”
“Holy kamoly!” said Mr. Benchley.
“Language, Mr. Benchley!” I couldn’t help myself.
“It wasn’t until she saw Marion’s pix in the paper this morning that she knew for sure that the girl wasn’t Mary Astor, but she was the same girl she served lunch to last week, last Thursday, she said.” Frank flicked his cigar ash, and sat back in his chair, a self-satisfied grin slapped over his face.
“The last day of Marion’s life,” said Mr. Benchley.
“She was murdered later that night,” said Aleck.
“Now we’ve got that established, what did they talk about, did she hear anything?” I asked.
“They were talking business. Talking big money,” said Frank. “The waitress said they came in at about two-fifteen, after the lunch rush. The waitress remembered, because she thought she was done with any more luncheon customers, and she wanted to make it cross-town to an audition for the new Ziegfeld show, and there was only one diner left, finishing up his lunch, when the women came in, the older one first, and a few minutes later, Mary Astor. Because the place was empty, she could hear snippets of their conversation.
“And?”
“She said they sounded like they were negotiating the price of something. Whatever they were referring to, one of them said, it was ‘cheap at that price.’ ”
“So, we know that Marion was a busy girl last Thursday,” said Mr. Benchley. “She was visited by Lucille in the morning, and had lunch with her lover’s wife mid-afternoon.”
“We’ve got to question Myrtle!” I said, leaping from my chair, startling Woodrow Wilson, who’d been lying in a food stupor at my feet. I picked him up and held him on my lap. “Has the waitress gone to the police with her story?”
“She’s afraid to go. She saw my column and decided to telephone me, but I have to keep things off the record until they catch the culprit who murdered Marion. I can understand she’s scared. Three people are dead, and she’s worried that she’ll be next if the killer is Myrtle, and she finds out that there’s a witness who overheard the conversation.”
“It was Myrtle who killed Reggie and the ladies?”
“Her alibi’s firm. And she certainly couldn’t have strangled Reginald on her own. She’s—what? Five feet tall and ninety pounds? Reggie was a lot more than twice her weight,” said Aleck.
“That’s like Mrs. Parker trying to strangle you, Aleck,” said Frank.
“Believe me,” I said, “I’ve tried too many a time and failed.”
They laughed. Then, Mr. Benchley suggested: “Perhaps, Mrs. Parker, if you dropped drugs into Aleck’s drinks, and then laid the pillow over his face, and pressed your entire weight against it—” “Don’t give Dottie any ideas, Bob!”
I ignored the nonsense, but in truth, it was a way a small woman could overtake a man as big as Reginald Pierce. And, the coroner found a feather in his hair.
“Myrtle might have done just that, Mr. Benchley—I must go see Myrtle.”
“Not alone, Mrs. Parker. You’re two inches shorter than she, and she might overtake you.”
“Shit! I can’t see her.”
“I’m glad you see reason, then.”
I threw Mr. Benchley my usual acid glare accusing him of idiocy.
“It’s nothing about reason at all! I can’t see her. I just remembered. She’s left town until Godknowswhen!”
“I’ll mark that date on my calendar and we’ll meet her train,” said Mr. Benchley.
“Do you think she knows we’re on to her?” asked Frank.
“How could she possibly think that, you dip-stick!” said Aleck.
“Dip-stick? You’re calling me a dip-stick?” said Frank, scrunching up his face.
“Stop it right now!” I hated playing teacher. Where was my yardstick?
“I can’t buy it,” said Frank. “There’s no murder in Myrtle’s heart.”
Aleck came back with, “When have you looked into anyone’s heart? There’s murder in everyone’s.”
“I suppose we are all capable of killing,” said Mr. Benchley, suddenly serious. “And it’s true that Myrtle had the most to gain from Reginald’s death. But, it stacks up too nicely to come to the conclusion that she planned the murder of three people. Anyway, she has a tight alibi for Reggie’s.”
“She may have hired someone to do him in,” posed Aleck.
“And leaving town makes her look even more guilty, if she’d done it,” said Frank.
Aleck looked over the tops of his frames at FPA, and the glare was in his eyes this time and not just reflections in his glasses. “How can someone be more guilty?” corrected Aleck. “She’s guilty or she’s not; you can’t be more or less or a little or a lot guilty! It’s like being pregnant, you are or you’re not! Or dead! You can’t be a little dead, or more dead, than other dead people.”
“Unless you’re Buster Keaton, that is,” said Mr. Benchley to me.
“Awww, shut up, you gas bag,” said Frank to Aleck with a straight face.
Tonight these two were like a bad marriage and had to be ignored. I said, “Let’s keep Myrtle as a suspect as she may have gotten around her alibi. I’ll put her at the top of the list.”
“Does anyone want to know what I found out?”
“Please, Mr. Benchley, do tell,” I said, glad for a change of focus.
“Maxwell S
ing is Ralph Chittenham’s son.”
“Holy moly!” said Frank.
“No crap?”
“Shit!”
They all turned to me like a chorus of cackling jackals: “Language, Mrs. Parker!”
Aleck and Mr. Benchley both had prior dinner invitations, but we agreed to meet again at my rooms at the Gonk at midnight. Frank wouldn’t be joining us, and although he didn’t say it outright, we all knew that his wife, Ruth, was getting annoyed with his many late nights; he needed to spend an evening by hearth and home, especially since Frank intended to join the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club for their Saturday night poker game. FPA’s way of life could sure put a strain on a marriage.
We left Tony’s to go our separate ways. It was a brisk evening, though cold for October, but the fresh air was reviving. A stiff wind off the Hudson worked to clear off the acrid coal smoke spent from newly fired furnaces. Both Woodrow Wilson and I needed the exercise, so I refused Aleck’s offer of a cab ride to walk the short distance home. I had lots to think about.
After Mr. Benchley told us about Chitty’s and Max’s relationship, he went on to say that he began poking around into Number One Son’s background for the very same reason I had given credence to the possibility of his active involvement in the murders: Maxwell knew about the secret drawer in Reggie’s desk. Also, Maxwell was in one way or another involved with all the major players.
The key to unlocking Maxwell Sing’s past was to look into Ralph Chittenham’s. That Chitty’s apartment was next door to Reggie’s and Myrtle’s was coincidence, as was the employment of a common servant. (People were always trying to steal good staff from their friends, but the coincidence raised a red flag.) Mr. Benchley took to heart my belief that there were no coincidences and began his search.
From Chitty’s own newspaper, he’d dug up a biography that amounted to little more than the columns readied by an obituary writer for publication should Ralph drop dead tomorrow.
So he called Bob Sherwood at Vanity Fair, and the two spent the afternoon searching through issues of the magazine for any mention of Ralph Chittenham, his social and organizational activities. Sherry even telephoned around in the guise of doing a story on the critic. And they came up with some interesting information.
Ralph Chittenham was born in Philadelphia in 1888 to Henry and Alice Porter Chittenham. His father was heir to a fortune from coalmining. One of six children, Ralph was educated at Exeter, and received a degree from Harvard, after which he went on to study Greco-Roman Art History at Oxford. He remained in England for three years, working in London at the British Museum under the tutelage of the curator of Greek antiquities. Ralph needn’t have worked a day in his life, for his parents had always proudly indulged the whims of their son, who was the one exceptionally brilliant child from a brood of unimpressive offspring. It was an age when to be idle and rich was viewed as the great American success, and the family fortune had never grown so expansively as when Ralph’s father, Henry, bought and converted two textile mills for the manufacturing of weapons on speculation that America would join the War in Europe. Ralph could pretty much do as he liked. He cringed at the idea of ever returning to the Philadelphia he’d left behind when he went off to school, but he returned to the States when England joined the fight in ’14, and secured a position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in our fair city, where he spent the next year researching 12th-century Benedictine illuminations. But soon, not content in his work, the young man sought escape from the bowels of the Met’s laboratories, and through a family friend, the publisher of a now-defunct newspaper, he secured the job of art critic for that publication. When the paper closed down in 1920, he left the country and traveled through Europe and the Middle East for more than a year.
It is known that during that time he secured passage to Alexandria. What he did and where he went from there may only be told by Ralph, as it is at that point that the trail runs cold until his return to New York and his employment as Arts Editor at the Morning Star Messenger in ’22.
And whom was he in company with when he returned by ship to New York? None other than Maxwell Sing, claiming to be Ralph Chittenham’s son. By my calculations, Chitty had to have been 16 when he fathered the boy, and it was obvious the lady in question had to have been of the Chinese persuasion.
Maxwell Sing. Houseboy, my arse!
Chitty had some explaining to do.
Maxwell Sing polishing silver
Chapter Nine
I hardly expected to see Wilfred Harrison sitting in the lobby of the Algonquin, dressed in evening clothes and reading an evening paper, when Woodrow Wilson and I arrived home. He stood up to greet us, and I led him to a quiet corner.
He made me nervous, or should I say, he unnerved me. I couldn’t help but stare at the man, for his Apollonian good looks were not so much pretty as they were of perfect proportion, flawless, really, and although his dress suit was impeccably tailored to show the broadness of his shoulders and the long, lean line of his back, I found myself mesmerized by the way the individual black hairs of his eyebrows formed such perfectly bent arches, how the cleft of his chin was like the blessed kiss of God upon His creation, how the closely trimmed fringe of his hair echoed the clean, curved wonder of his sculpted ear. I swayed, literally, swayed from side to side, as I stood next to him, breathing in his clean earthiness, like a cedar forest after the rain. His voice—his warm-timbred baritone, like the rustle of sheets—soothed, calmed, and did easily seduce a nervous type like me. I felt myself unraveling, slowly, willingly. I was coming undone.
He was so very beautiful that I had to force myself to actually listen to what he was saying, to ignore the hypnotic tone of his voice and concentrate on the words.
Although he may have thought I had telephoned for personal, romantic reasons, my real agenda was to question him about Marion Fields and anything he might tell me that would find her killer. I had to come clean, tell him about my suspicions, but before I did, I wanted him to know that I really was interested in getting to know him for more personal reasons. And as I am often shy around men when I have a notion of romantic interest, I tend to speak sentences rife with acerbic adjectives in iambic pentameter. Words are my shields, and sometimes, my enemies.
But, did I want such a man in my life? I know it was crazy, but falling in love with such a man as Will could be dangerous in so many ways. A catch like Will would ultimately cost me dearly, I knew that. It couldn’t last. When he got to know me, he’d want to leave me; when I got to know him, I’d find him not so beautiful, not so perfect, and I would behave so badly that he would have to leave me. I am small and sweet-looking perhaps, but even with my brilliant career, my sought-after presence, I am not enough for such a man. And because he will find me lacking in so many ways, and for all that I am not, he would be the end of me.
I straightened my spine as I reconciled my fantasy with my reality. I melted a bit when he told me that he had left a dinner given by a partner in his firm just to see me. It was not the best political move to do so, I figured, though he was loath to suggest or in any way imply concern over it. He suggested dinner, if I was available, and we might go wherever I wanted. I grabbed at the invitation, but wisely left him in the lobby while I went up to my rooms to change into evening clothes and to settle my little man, Woodrow Wilson, in for the night.
Twenty-five minutes later, I returned to the lobby bathed, face restored, dressed in an Aberdeen crêpe-de-chine gown, cut on the bias, dripping with nine strands of fully faceted pale-amber-toned crystal beads, circling in layers like dancing lights from my bare neck to my hips; the same amber crystals dangled from my ears; a chic wide band of gold lamé embroidered with a peacock feather motif wrapped my bobbed hair. A cape of honey-colored dyed muskrat, fringed with red fox, draped my shoulders; strapped heels were on my feet and my favorite Worth evening purse dangled from my fingers. If I say so, myself, I looked smashing for a little cluck.
And all the while, as I d
ressed, as I came down the elevator from my rooms, as I crossed the lobby to where he sat so elegantly, languidly, waiting for me, I knew very well that I was sticking my fork in the toaster.
But, my bun was stuck and I was very hungry.
I made two or three restaurant suggestions, and left the final decision to Will. The Algonquin night doorman, Peter, whom we all called St. Peter as he guards the entry gates of our “final resting place of the evening,” hailed us a cab and we were off to Pierre’s, one of the finest French restaurants in New York.
If you took great care, and had the cash, any booze could be had for the asking, and at Pierre’s, the Chateauneuf-du-Pape flowed freely.
I do love champagne. Oh, how I love champagne! I was damned from the moment I first saw Will waiting for me to return home. And now, sensual pleasures compounding: champagne.
From the anticipation of uncorking the dark-green bottle, and the dread of losing too many precious ounces as the liquid bursts forth, to the cheerful burbling as it pours into the glass, and the wonderful golden shimmer of the liquid when you raise your glass to the candlelight. The foam grows to the top of the flute like a living thing; the toast, the electric crackle at the lips like a first kiss, the breath of alcohol that assaults the nose, the bracing sting as the magic fluid dances over the tongue, and the cold shock to the throat that instantly warms the chest with unhurried and tranquil comfort: All these assaults to the senses make it a sublime indulgence.
And after two bottles with five courses, I felt sublimely indulged.
The musicians on violin and accordion transported us to Paris in the spring, and Paris in the spring is certainly sublime. I pushed aside my crème brûlée, fully sated, ready for love.
But nagging at me were questions, for my intellect would not submit. I had to regain some semblance of clarity to present them to Will.
Throughout dinner our conversation was centered on the cultural benefits of living in the city, and people we knew. We spoke very little of that which was personal in nature, other than relating the basic facts of our lives. I grew up on the West Side of Manhattan, my mother died when I was a child, my stepmother, before I turned ten; the Academy, Vogue, Vanity Fair, freelancing, the Theatre. For some strange reason, I could not speak of Mr. Benchley. I suppose I couldn’t have him there in the room with us, even though he was always with me, even when he was far away.
[Dorothy Parker 01] - The Broadway Murders Page 15
