[Dorothy Parker 01] - The Broadway Murders

by Agata Stanford

  Will, the third son of factory workers in Detroit, a scholarship to Yale, Skull and Bones, Rowing Club, law school, boxing, baseball—how about that Babe Ruth!—his love of jazz—we’d head up to Harlem and the Cotton Club next time, I told him. There would be a next time, surely.

  Could he sit in on the Thanatopsis poker game some Saturday night? I assured him my friends would love to take his money as soon as anyone else’s; I’d arrange it, I said. I wanted my friends, Jane especially, to give him their seal of approval. Mr. Benchley, too. But, we didn’t talk about how or what we felt or thought or wanted, not about anything of importance in life. It was simply a match game of I like, he likes, that sort of impersonal exchange. That’s all that should be covered for the first time out.

  But, I took a really good look at him, beyond the handsome profile and elegant wardrobe, and I really liked the rather quiet, measured and thoughtful way he spoke. I liked his genuine interest in me, not so much the celebrity me, but the woman me. I’d see him again, if he asked me, that’s for sure. An unpretentious man in my world comes along once in a blue moon.

  Broaching the subject of Marion Fields was not as difficult as I thought it would be, as Will gave me the opening I needed to get started when he asked if I was enjoying my Renoir. I told him I was, indeed, happy to have it, and grateful that Reggie had remembered me so extravagantly. I told him the story of my interest in the picture, about my aunt's and uncle’s fateful voyage on the Titanic, and about how Reginald and I had both attended the same auction when the Renoir came up for sale years later, and how he had far more money than I to buy it.

  And then, “So you were you Marion Fields’s attorney as well as Reginald Pierce’s?”

  “Not either’s. Mr. Pierce was a client of one of the law firm’s partners, who fell ill the day before the funeral. I was asked to read the will on his behalf. As for Miss Fields, she isn’t my client.”

  “You were unable to tell me any details about the gift Reggie arranged for Marion, outside of his will. But now that she’s . . . dead, is it something that can be discussed?”

  “Some money in trust,” he said, “not a lot.” He looked up at me and his eyes narrowed and softened. I thought he was going to add something more about Marion, but instead he said, “Do you know that you have the softest brown eyes. They’re the color of fine cognac.” He reached across the table to take my hand in his. “I’m so glad that you called me, Dorothy. Oh, my, Dorothy, you’re grand!”

  Shit! This is not good. Turn back now, said a voice in my head, not unlike Mr. Benchley’s. It couldn’t have been him, though; my friend did not use four-letter words. I would not listen. I told him to shut up.

  “This probably strikes you as corny when I say it,” continued Will, “but a woman such as you, why, to have you on my arm, it’s a dream come true.

  “Gee, I’m a little crazy about you—” he went on, uninterrupted, because I was speechless by now, “—more than a little, and if you don’t think it’s too forward of me to say so, I’ve had a little crush on you for a long time, from afar. I’ve read everything you’ve written, and I’ve always felt that behind that biting prose was a soft heart. I can see your heart through those lovely eyes.”

  God, help me! Make him stop, because I can’t speak. My tongue is wrapped like a pretzel around my throat.

  “And, now, when I’m finally lucky enough to meet the most charming woman, she allows me to escort her to dinner. It’s true what they say: You are the toast of New York.”

  So what if his lovemaking was corny; it was oh, so wonderful to hear. I unfurled my tongue, and managed to croak out, “Thank you.”

  “I have a confession to make.”

  Crap, you’re married.

  “I hope you won’t be angry.”

  Only if you’re married.

  “I haven’t been honest with you.”

  You didn’t tell me you’re married.

  “Well, you see, when Mr. Whipple at the firm, Mr. Pierce’s attorney, fell ill, well, I asked to represent him at the reading of the will. You see, another partner of the firm was going to do it, and I knew he was very busy, and I convinced him, you see . . .”

  “Well, at least it isn’t like you’re—” I stopped, abruptly, as I was about to say “married.” I threw in a fast substitute: “—a murderer, or something!”

  “You see, I wanted to meet you. I knew you were named in the will, and it was my chance, you see.”

  “Well,” I fluttered, “I couldn’t be more . . . flattered, really.”

  “Gee, you’re swell,” he said, dreamily, kneading my hand, gazing deeply into my eyes.

  After he signaled the waiter for the bill, he leaned in closer and said, “May I see you again? Please say, ‘yes.’ ”

  I didn’t have to say anything because it was written on my face like bright red-letters on a billboard, so he continued with, “I’d love to paint the town red with you, Dorothy, but it’ll have to wait. I have to be in court first thing in the morning, and I have a couple of hours of work to do before I call it a night.”

  I made an inane comment about the trials and tribulations of the hard-working attorney, but I felt a little crushed at the abrupt ending to our evening, all the same. I had been prepared to take him to my rooms and leave messages for Aleck and Mr. Benchley to call up from the lobby before they stormed my place. It had also crossed my mind, too, that Wilfred might be able to help us with our investigation into the murders, but that was the last thing I wanted to discuss with him tonight, anyway. Right now, I was enjoying a romantic evening with a man I hoped to get to know better.

  In the cab he wrapped his arms around me, and by the time we turned off the avenue and onto my street, his lips were on mine. I felt my heart beating wildly in my chest, and a fluttering in my belly that had nothing to do with the digestion of the cassoulet from dinner.

  He asked the driver to wait as he saw me up the elevator to my rooms. Woodrow Wilson yelped excitedly on the other side of the door. After turning the key in the lock, he once again took me in his arms for a longer kiss. I managed to gurgle, “Good night,” and slipped in through the doorway to the adoring kisses of my little man, Woodrow Wilson. Delightful, but not quite knee-buckling.

  Within the hour Aleck and Mr. Benchley would arrive, and I had little to tell them. I took Woodrow Wilson for a short stroll down the street so that he could attend to business and I could cool down a little bit. I stopped at the corner newsstand and bought the late editions. The night had gotten colder, or was it that I was no longer basking in the warm glow of Mr. Perfect, Wilfred Harrison? I wrapped my fur more snugly around me as I headed home.

  I threw off my shoes and settled in to read the headlines, but there were no new leads on the Broadway Murders. The police had their man, Gerald Saches, so that manhunt was over. But on the obituary page of the World were Marion Fields’s photograph and the short story of her life:

  Born 1899 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she was the only child of Harold (deceased) and Brenda McEnerny (survives her daughter). Star of her high school’s plays, she came to New York for a career in Theatre. There followed a short list of shows in which she appeared in the chorus.

  An idea struck me. I called down to the desk and asked the operator to place a call to Brenda McEnerny in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  I had just hung up the receiver when Aleck and Mr. Benchley arrived at my door, sending Woodrow Wilson into a frenzy of excitement. When my friends arrived at this hour they usually brought an offering of sorts for me, and always a morsel for Woodrow. I settled the men in with drinks, and laid out the dozen petitfours pocketed in a linen napkin from Aleck’s dinner party. Mr. Benchley’s marzipan was wrapped in brown paper and string, and had been purchased at a sweetshop around the corner.

  “I just got off the telephone with Brenda McEnerny.”

  “Costume designer for Belasco?” asked Aleck.

  “No”

  “Am I supposed to know this McEnerny person?” />
  “Not at all. She’s Marion Fields’s mother. Just spoke with her. She is boarding a sleeper out of Ann Arbor for New York, arriving Grand Central tomorrow afternoon. She’s coming to see about Marion’s belongings. I told her I’d meet her train and take her to the apartment.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Benchley, “she might shed some light on who may have killed her daughter.”

  “I hope so. But she hasn’t seen Marion since she ran off in 'nineteen. She didn’t know she’d changed her name.” (It hadn’t yet occurred to her that Marion had taken the name Fields as a stage name rather than retain the ponderous-sounding McEnerney.) “She didn’t know Marion had come to New York, not until this morning when she saw her daughter’s face on the front page of her newspaper.”

  “Well, it’s time we take a closer look at Ralph Chittenham,” said Mr. Benchley. “Pay him a visit.”

  “To what end?” asked Aleck. “The man and his son have no motive for killing any of the three victims.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “I don’t know how anyone can tie him to any of the murders.”

  “Things don’t stack right, though. Think about it. He’s an arts critic with degrees in ancient art history up the wazoo. Reggie has a collection of Egyptian artifacts, some of which Gerry feared may have been looted from the Deir el-Bahri excavations. That was a Metropolitan Museum dig, dintchaknow? Ralph was with the museum during that time, and not too long after leaving his post he booked passage to Alexandria. We don’t know where he went from there; we can only guess.”

  “You think he was Reggie’s dealer, is that it?”

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Benchley, weighing his words, careful not to jump to false conclusions. “Or, he may have found out that Reggie’s collection did indeed include the looted Golden Selket. We need to find out if, during the months that his movements were unaccounted for, he was at the dig.”

  “You think he stole the Golden Selket from the site and then sold it to Reggie?”

  “Maybe. But I think he may have some direct connection to the statue.”

  “He may have killed Reggie for it,” I said, nodding, because it made sense.

  “Or, perhaps he tried to steal it from Reggie’s collection, and when Reggie caught him in the act Ralph killed him; and then Lucille knew or saw something, so she had to die. It’s all speculation, of course.”

  “Ralph didn’t kill anybody,” said Aleck. “He’s not the sort.”

  Mr. Benchley said: “I didn’t know there was ‘a sort,’ Aleck. Everyone is capable of murder: Mothers kill to protect their children, men to protect their land, and throughout history, in the name of God, for God’s sake! Anyway, Gerry told Mrs. Parker that Reggie received a telephone call the night of his death. Maybe Ralph was the caller who telephoned Reggie to say they had to meet, and things proceeded, with or without the initial intent to kill—”

  The memory of a conversation at the Waldorf the other evening popped into my head. “Wait a minute! I don’t think he was even in town that night. He was in Boston reviewing a show. That’s right, he was reviewing Grounds for Divorce, Ina Claire’s new play. I’ve heard good things about its out-of-town runs. She’s supposed to be marvelous in it. It opens here next week. I remember the conversation because I have to review the opening night. He couldn’t have killed Reggie or Lucille. He was hundreds of miles away.”

  “Where was I during this conversation?” asked Aleck.

  “Fussing over Fanny Brice.”

  “Oh, yes. But, dintchaknow?” said Aleck. “Last week’s performances of Grounds for Divorce were canceled. Ina and half the cast fell sick with that illness that’s been going around. The Boston opening was delayed a week. Opens tomorrow, but with Ina’s understudy. She’s got pneumonia and is in the hospital. Read about it in Variety this afternoon.”

  Mr. Benchley said, “So if Chitty said he saw the play in Boston last Wednesday he was lying.”

  “He was giving himself an alibi, but didn’t realize the one he chose would blow up in his face!” said Aleck, a little too happily.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Maxwell was his spy in the Dakota household, and then, later, at Reggie’s apartment. If he wasn’t the dealer who sold Reggie the statue, then perhaps he was trying to steal the Golden Selket!” said Mr. Benchley.

  ”Do you think the statue was hidden in plain sight in the Ming vase all that time?” I asked.

  “Marion knew where it was,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Or guessed. She obviously knew its value. Ralph may have figured that she knew where it was hidden, and that she had stolen it from the apartment. I wonder if Ralph has the statue now.”

  “Should we tell the police what we’ve discovered?”

  “Not yet,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Bob is right,” said Aleck. “Just because his alibi doesn’t wash, it may just mean he was cheating at writing the review, heard or read other notices and didn’t want to bother making a trip to Boston. Perhaps he was somewhere else instead, not necessarily murdering Reginald Pierce.”

  “And to play devil’s advocate, even if he had something to do with the statue, it doesn’t mean for sure he’d kill for it. Let’s sleep on it,” said Mr. Benchley. “I can’t see us racing over there at this hour to confront him. Tomorrow I’ll check at the museum. See if he ventured to the Deir el-Bahri excavations.”

  “I’ll meet Marion’s mother’s train after lunch, and while we’re at the apartment, maybe I’ll learn something.”

  The boys left me a little while later with lots to think about. I had a restless sleep with Wilfred Harrison dominating my dreams.

  I spent the later hours of the next morning delivering long-overdue articles to the offices of magazine publishers, as I desperately needed the commissions. Flush once more, I popped into several shops to settle bills, and then spent half an hour deciding whether or not to buy a lovely little number in midnight-blue lace. Woodrow Wilson was my voice of reason when he barked his disapproval and headed for the shop’s entrance, turning his back toward me to face the street, indicating he wished to leave the premises. I know he had to pee, but sometimes I really do think he’s trying to tell me not to be an ass. I was weeks behind in my rent, and although I knew the Gonk’s management, Frank Case in particular, was glad to have me as a tenant, as my celebrity brought in lots of business, I knew I had to settle that bill, too.

  Dress poor, and soon to be once again penniless, or nearly, off we trooped for home and our one o’clock luncheon with the boys.

  And how nice to receive a telephone call from Will a couple of minutes after my return, thanking me for spending last evening with him, and saying that he was looking forward to seeing me on Saturday night.

  At twelve-thirty the newsmen of the Round Table met in my rooms to share information they’d gathered over the past twenty-four hours. There were lots of new leads and descriptions of the killer from unreliable sources, all differing: The killer had been seen entering the Chinese restaurant across the street from the Reginald Pierce Theatre the night of Reggie’s murder. He was tall, blond, and had a scar across his left cheek. At the same time, a bald, mustached midget from the circus at the Hippodrome was seen running from the back-stage alley of the Pierce Theatre. A third witness bumped into a cloaked figure wearing a top hat. He had a limp and sported a handlebar moustache, etc., etc.

  One of the witnesses to Marion’s murder, who had been interviewed by the police, spoke with Swope. He said a tall, dark, and handsome man, around thirty years old, rushed through the crowd at the curb and pushed Marion. Of course, when you looked at the fact that on any Broadway street, within an hour of the final curtains of six-dozen matinees, one is likely to see tall, dark, and handsome men, actors all, more than anywhere else in Manhattan, finding such an individual fellow would be close to impossible!

  And then there were the crazies, among them religious fanatics who spoke of evil-doers and the moral decay of our culture, of the damage the Broadway Theatre was doing to the s
ouls of the American people. To these nuts the murders were committed by God’s messenger to rid our country of the depravity that was corrupting our children, and it was only a matter of time before God would finally kill us all, as He had done to Sodom and Gomorrah.

  On that note, we went down to lunch.

  The New York Public Library at 42nd Street—Groucho stopped here to snatch a book for a scavenger hunt. Up he ran the long flight of steps flanked with grand, carved marble lions facing Fifth Avenue. Behind the Library is Bryant Park, where we fetched a park bench—and a vagrant. Down the side street to the left of the library is 40th Street. In this picture, which is ten years old, there is airspace where the American Radiator Company Building now stands.

  The Marx Brothers—

  These fools are as crazy off-stage as they are on-stage, but what fun!

  Chapter Ten

  After lunch, Mr. Benchley, Aleck, and I went our separate ways: Mr. Benchley, uptown to Fifth Avenue and 80th Street where stands the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the hope of learning more about Ralph Chittenham; Aleck, two avenues over to the New York Times newsroom, in an effort to contact, by telephone or telegram, the missing Myrtle Pierce; and I, to Grand Central Terminal and Track 26 to meet the 3:10 from Ann Arbor.

  The streets were congested with traffic, as I walked the few blocks to Vanderbilt Avenue. There was construction in every direction I looked. The Park Avenue skyline was changing once again, as residential apartments and hotels were claiming air rights, and the tall skyscrapers were rising taller every week. The heights were startling! The Metropolitan Life Tower had already soared to 50 stories, and the Woolworth Building, the world's tallest, to the magnificent height of 57 stories. These miraculous feats of engineering threatened to block out all sunlight!